


In Ungue Adamantino Potestatem

by KingofTrees



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Aliens, Cyberpunk, Diamond Authority - Freeform, Dystopia, F/F, Fourth stevenbomb means I have to rewrite a hell of a lot, Futuristic, Gen, Homeworld - Freeform, No crystal gems here, Social Sci-Fi, at least, caste system, high society - Freeform, its an AU now, non-canon, not centered around them, sorry for delay, world building, you know what fuck it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4440500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingofTrees/pseuds/KingofTrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything they have ever done has been in the name of the Homeworld, and to ensure the safety of all gemkind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Preceptor of Peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a couple music recommendations in order to enhance the quality of this fic!
> 
> The Parliament: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXldUfjMG6Q
> 
> The Spire of Mirrors (White Diamond's theme): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAqA-ky2K0

 

A breathtaking building of green glass and crystal, high enough to carve a hole through the stratosphere and into low orbit. Over the city sized entrance, the words, DIAMAUTH PARLIAMENT, and, in three rhombuses rendered in brass, platinum and martensite, each one as large as a frigate, DiamAuth’s slogan: ONE CONGLOMERATE, ONE MIND, ONE SOCIETY.

 

And in one of the three great spires that surround the Parliament, an architectural fever dream of silicate and gold, someone looks out from the top of the world, her gaze reaching down to watch the traffic and the patrols flicker like distant stars. She smiles before she returns to her penthouse, her pearl offering her a brooch and a ring (shaped from gems cut into rhombuses and framed in gold) which she slips on and polishes with her sleeve. She makes sure not to touch one certain bit that juts out from the jewellery.

 

Her pearl returns to its cell with a bow as the gem exits her penthouse. She walks past two hulking carnotites, brilliant yellow light shining out from vision slits in their lead chromate suits, gamma-staves humming, powered by the gradual decay of the gems. They bow as she makes her way to a warp pad, staying where they are as the doors close. The warp pad glows with vast amounts of energy, and a quick gesture sees her teleported nearly 100 miles away, into the top of the DiamAuth Parliament .

 

She steps off from her destination's warp pad and walks into a security screening zone of the Parliamentary Chamber, handing over her jewels to the suspicious, tiny rubies who scan her belongings with all the unerring scrutiny of the terrified. They bow as they hand her jewellery back, and she walks through an omniscanner without it being set off (she’s made sure of that), joining the throng of fellow politicians and lobbyists who talk amongst each other animatedly as they resume their seats, the richest being tailed by their own pearls. They give her a wide berth, or approach her begging for favours or patronage. She ignores them all.

 

She takes her seat as the Preceptor of Society, Prosperity and Peace, resting on a chair rendered in gold and inert yellow diamond. The other Preceptors take their own seats, each created out of different materials and designs; a flowing sculpture of silver and white diamond for the Preceptor of Might, Wealth, and Happiness; a throne of blue diamond and cobalt for the Preceptor of Creation, Information and Education. Their seats haven’t changed hands since the Quartz Schisms; they still rule the Row of the Preceptors. Obsidians stand behind the Row of the Preceptors, magma reserves bubbling in vats attached to their backs, black pits staring hungrily at the Parliament. Anthophyllites stand behind them as well, restraining the obsidians with chains and the choking miasma that follows them. You can never be too careful around the under-clades.

 

As she idly watches the Parliament slowly separate into the three unofficial, ancient, hideously powerful factions that define government, the Speaker of the Parliament raises a hand which morphs into a bell, and rings it with a finger-made-hammer.

 

“Order in the Parliament!” the beautiful orthoclase yells, voice amplified by the microphone situated at the table in front of her. “In the name of our beloved Silica, and DiamAuth, and the Crystal System, we call the five-hundred-thousand, six-hundred and seventh Parliament into session, One Conglomerate, One Mind, One Society.”

 

The chamber echoes their cry, her included.

 

“In this week’s Parliament, we shall discuss the demands of the colony on Heinrichite to allowed increased security measures for protection from inter-system pirate raids, the adequate level of retaliation against the rioting gems in the asteroid mines of Hygaea Ten, and, I know that this one will be of interest to many of our eldest members, the poll surveys for increased dedicated leisure time amongst all clades-”

 

“Speaker of the House,” she interrupts, “I have a topic matter that is far more important than any of these, ah, petty discussions.”

 

“Oh?” The orthoclase leans in, an eyebrow raised in intrigue. “Then inform the Parliament, Lord Preceptor.”

 

“Very well, Speaker,” she retorts as she stands up, her vox-robonoid rising to her lips. “I have, at great expense, obtained definite proof that the eco-terrorist organisation known as the Crystal Gems is still in existence.”

 

The Parliament descends into madness, the youngest jeering and laughing at the absurdity of such a claim while the oldest sit in silence, remembering the conflict. The obsidians lurch forwards, base instincts demanding they respond to the noisy display with violence, and the anthophyllites smother them with choking clouds of asbestos in an attempt to calm them. White Diamond’s eyes widen like supernovae. The bell rings again.

  
“Order, ORDER! Yes, Jasper Facet-1A6D Cut-2AA, that includes you, sit down before I have you suspended! Carry on, Preceptor.”

 

“Yes, well,” she begins as she taps a short sequence of orders into a relay link wired to her underlings waiting outside, “as I was saying, I have an eyewitness testimonial that the Crystal Gems have somehow managed to survive the Quartz Schisms, even if their military capability has been greatly reduced. They are still residing on that org-infested ball of mud they call Earth. While they pose little threat on their own, there is the possibility that Rose Quartz may still live.”

 

A rising murmur, laced with worry and panic, rushes through the Parliament. Could it be true? Could the First Anticitizen still live? Were they planning another war? Could Rose be building more gems from the Kindergarten on Earth? A jasper with a veritable mane of white hair stands up; the one identified earlier.

 

“If you have proof my lord, please show it to us.”

 

“Very well, Jasper Facet-1A6D Cut-2AA.” She presses her finger to her ear, activating a covert vox-robonoid linked with the guards waiting outside. “Bring in the lazurite.”

 

Two carnotites who shine like dying stars burst through the main door, dragging a shackled lazurite who is unceremoniously dumped in front of the Row of the Preceptors. Unsurprisingly, the captive looks terrified; the eyes of the most powerful empire in the galaxy bear down on her. However, the lazurite notices the Preceptors and seem to calm down. She isn’t surprised; after all, the lazurite is wearing an ancient pattern of her sibling’s insignia on their chest.

 

“Unknown lazurite,” the Speaker states, “ AtmosCom picked you up entering Silica's atmospheric space without authorisation. When questioned, you said you could provide information regarding the continued existence of Rose Quartz and her rebel organisation, the Crystal Gems. Is this true?”

 

The lazurite seems lost for words, overwhelmed by the overbearing nature of the Parliament, but after a gentle nod of encouragement from White Diamond, she stands up.

 

“My name is Lapis. Lapis Lazuli, formerly bonded to the Blue Lattice,” the lazurite meekly replies, eliciting a chorus of disgusted hisses from the Parliament. Personal names are exactly that; only the most depraved or archaic of gems would openly refer to themselves by name in public. Others cannot believe that a gem so lowly a clade would declare her independence, and right in front of her benefactor! Only Blue Diamond seems amused by this display of independence, lounging back on her throne as she nods for her former lazurite to continue.

 

“What the Speaker states is correct. I have seen them with my own eyes. The Crystal Gems still exist.”

 

“How many? Can you describe them to us?”

 

“There’s only three of them, and a couple of humans. The humans are insignificant, you really don’t need to worry about them. Trust me.”

 

“The Parliament could care less about the organics,” replies the Speaker, much to the lazurite’s relief, “we care about the gems. Who are they?”

 

“One is a pearl. She’s fiercely protective of the humans, and fights as well as any of the warrior-clades.”

 

The pearls recognise that description, and they whisper amongst each other apprehensively; the Flower Knight exists, the songs are true! They’re not the only one who react; there are many veterans in the Parliament, and they mutter to themselves; Gemtaker, the Butcher of the Sky Arena. One elderly onyx nearly breaks down into tears.

 

“Another is an amethyst. She’s Earth-born, and loyal to the Crystal Gems. She fights every bit as well as the other two.”

 

“And the final one?”

 

“A fusion. A permanent fusion.”

 

She do their best to ignore the audible retching and coughing that resounds around the Parliament. Her sister clenches her throne so hard she can hear something shatter. A few of the youngest members sit there in shocked silence, trying to figure out just why two gems would choose to subject themselves to that. Fusion is for emergencies, or for a bit of meaningless fun. To fuse out of...devotion is sheer weakness and selfishness. To share oneself with only one other gem is to go against every school of DiamAuth indoctrination. The Jasper from earlier stands up, ignoring the Speaker’s verbal warning.

 

“I remember that...thing. I fought it at the Field of Sorrow. That creature was surrounded by humans. We say that weakness attracts weakness, but that thing is strong. It killed nearly six other gems before I could defeat it.”

 

“It calls itself Garnet,” the lazurite nervously replies. “You recognise the name?”

 

Jasper Facet-1A6D Cut-2AA remains silent, clenching her fist over and over again. When she speaks again, it is to the Row of the Preceptors.

 

“Preceptors, I am willing to go to Earth and investigate the reliability of the lazurite's claims. Give me a way to get there, and I swear by the Silica that I will return with their gems on a plate!”

 

“Now hold on a moment,” White Diamond replies, silencing the cheers before they can ring out. “Surely it would be better to pursue an avenue of caution first? We have no direct confirmation aside from Lapis’ word.”

 

“Believe me, Noble Preceptor,” the lazurite retorts, “the Crystal Gems exist.”

 

“Oh, dear, of course I believe you. What I’m saying is, so what? Why should we respond with immediate violence? The Crystal Gems have not claimed responsibility for any attacks for over five millennia. Why should we provoke them and risk starting another war? Members of the Parliament, we are living in a golden age. The many work so that we may enjoy our existence, and we protect them from threat in return. To provoke this nest of traitors would only lead to the disruption of this system, and risk unnecessary death!”

 

“Sister,” she replies, standing up to address the Parliament, “the Crystal Gems are the most wanted criminals in DiamAuth. They fractured a society that had stood strong for thousands of millennia. _Millions_ of gems died in that conflict, and now that we know the location of the final members of that terrible group you want us to leave them alone, in order to preserve peace? Sister, I fought their ships in the orbit of the Choking Planet, I led my bonded against them at the Ocean of Calm, I bombed their fortresses on the Red Sister, and they _still_ kept coming! Once committed, they will not stop until Silica lies in ruins! We absolutely must crush them now! In order to ensure peace, we must destroy the Crystal Gems!”

 

The Parliament goes wild. Gems of every clade call for their death. They chant the her name, the veterans screaming affirmations of loyalty. The obsidians strain at their leashes again while the lone lazurite stares at the screaming Parliament with fear at what she’s created, and she shares a nervous glance with White Diamond.

 

“It seems to me,” the Speaker continues, nearly voiceless from her putdowns of the more vocal members of Parliament, “that the government has already made their mind up. Nevertheless, it must be put to a formal confirmation. All those in favour of eradicating the Crystal Gems, say ‘aye’.”

 

All those bonded to her and Blue Diamond raise their hands, a chorus of ayes and yeses echoing around the auditorium. She is pleased to see members of White Diamond’s court agreeing with the rest of the Parliament. Her agents will come into contact with them.

 

“All those against eradicating the Crystal Gems, say ‘aye.’”

 

Less than half of White Diamond’s court respond, alongside a few independents and rebels in Blue Diamond’s camp. She is pleased to see no rebels in her faction. She hates having to purge her ranks. So time consuming.

 

“Very well,” continues the Speaker, trying to suppress a grin and failing miserably, “let it be known that on the one-hundred and eighty-ninth cycle of the one-million, eight-hundred thousand, one hundred and first year, that the Parliament, in the name of Silica, DiamAuth, and the Crystal System, did declare intentions to eradicate the Crystal Gems from the face of the galaxy once and for all.”

 

She smiles as the Parliament rejoices.

 

* * *

 

 

In the Spire of Mirrors, the Preceptors hold a private court.

 

The three Diamonds sit around a silver table that shows their domain carved out of the stars, the planets and sectors marked with the gems of honoured servants. White Diamond is tense yet exudes an aura of power, in the same manner of a web-wraith with an insect in their lair. Blue Diamond tries not to look around the room; White Diamond is notorious for perfecting the art of the hidden kill, and the last time Blue Diamond tried to conquer the Spire of Mirrors her forces were defeated before they even made it up halfway. And she is drumming her fingers on the table, waiting patiently for her agents to come and join them from the Spire of Gold. She makes sure not to break anything; White Diamond is notoriously stressful when it comes to her belongings, and the last time she trashed her place a civil war nearly broke out.

 

Two of her carnotite guard stand behind her, trying to intimidate every gem in the room, daring someone to attack either of the armoured gems. Out of respect for their host they have sheathed their weapons, and stand with their arms folded behind their backs, yellow capes fluttering in the artificial breeze. Blue Diamond has her own guards, two azurites who wear burkas of embroidered navy cloth stitched with blue spinels, cerulean lamellar plate worn over the cloth. They’re nowhere near as big as her own hulking carnotites but they’re no less dangerous; heat-falchions are sheathed by their hips, and las-serpentas are holstered around their backs. They stand to attention behind Blue Diamond, eyeballing her carnotites. Assuming they even had eyes; not even she knew what was hidden behind those full body veils they wore. White Diamond had nothing, save robonoid-statues that line the walls, circling through a variety of heroic positions. They looked innocent enough, but she knew the real power contained in those things.

 

There’s a knock on the door, and a pearl comes through. Behind her marches a tiny peridot who struggles on small limbs. The yellow rhombus that has been faceted into her neck marks the diminuitive gem as belonging to her Lattice. Jasper Facet-1A6D Cut-2AA (who, according to naming protocol, is simply Jasper for now) is also there. She’s taken to wearing a brass chain necklace, with a bronze rhombus hanging down from its centre. The lazurite from earlier is there as well, and her eyes widen in panic when she sees the Preceptors looking at her.

 

“Ah, our esteemed guests have arrived,” drawls White Diamond. “Please, sit.”

 

Jasper moves to sit next to her, while the peridot sits equidistant between her and Blue Diamond. The lazurite sits as far away from Blue Diamond as possible. The pearl bows, closing the door and standing to one side, tuning out the conversation. Good gems don’t hear what isn’t meant for their ears.

 

“You are welcome in my house," her sister purrs, "for now at least. Come, you want some refreshments? How about some water?”

 

“Yes please,” the lazurite chimes in moments before Blue Diamond shakes her veiled, eyeless head at her sister.

 

“Have you forgotten what lazurites can do? Give her water and we’ll all be dead in minutes.”

 

“My name is Lapis Lazuli-”

 

“And you are an insolent little under-clade, who doesn’t know when to shut her mouth,” Jasper nearly yells at her. “We’re in the presence of the Noble Preceptors; start _behaving_ like it, you weakling.”

 

“Oh! Are all the members of your Lattice so...brash," her sister titters rhetorically, and she scowls when Jasper notices her presence in the room. This particular Jasper has proven to be an invaluable asset to her Lattice, the pinnacle of her clade in both command and combat roles. Yet she is quick to anger, something that makes her an embarrassment for formal occasions such as these. Jasper notices her ire and averts her eyes.

 

“Forgive me, my Preceptor. It was a moment of emotional weakness, nothing more.”

 

“I’m not your Preceptor,” White Diamond interrupts, much to her frustration, “but you are forgiven nonetheless. Lapis Lazuli has forsaken the Blue Lattice, she is an independent and without protection; I'm sure she can say what she wants, within reason. Don’t worry dear,” she hastily adds when the lazurite begins to panic, “you will always remain a guest with the White Lattice. Meet me in my private quarters after this little shindig has run its course.”

 

She rolls her eyes at this obvious show of force, but she doesn’t say anything. It wouldn't do to upset a Diamond in their home, especially when their walls are lined with guards pretending to be statues.

 

“Enough of this,” she snaps. “Let’s get to the point, shall we?”

 

“Yes, lets,” Blue Diamond echoes with a humourless growl. “We summoned the three of you because we believe that, since my former lazurite keeps telling us there’s barely any of the Crystal Gems left, your covert insertion will keep them unaware until you strike. Your unique skills will help us prevail, what with your martial prowess, her guide skills and her technological prowess,” she states as she indicates to Jasper, the lazurite and the peridot respectively.

 

“Why can’t we just send a fleet?” The lazurite doesn't look her former master in the eyes at all. “Surely that would do way more damage than us three could manage?”

 

“A large fleet would send both the rebels and the natives into full alert, and apparently they've got the technology to shoot us out of the sky now. The Red Eye that the peridot here sent out went suspiciously missing, and I don't believe that it was stolen by pirates when it was so near to that awful planet.”

 

“The Red Eye was an obsolete bit of exploration technology. Whatever they have won’t do much against shielded world-crackers,” White Diamond points out. “We can shoot down most of them.”

 

“Yes, but those ships that get hit will suffer tremendous casualties,” Blue Diamond replies. “I have no interest in starting another useless war over a garden world with some tenacious natives, or telling some minor lattice that their leader was killed by some organic with a missile!”

 

”I agree,” she confirms. “That’s why we’re sending my peridot in first.”

 

The small gem had been silent up to that point, but she stirs out of her reverie when she hears her plan.

 

“Are you cra- I mean, forgive me, my Lord Preceptor, but I’m just a peridot. If they show up, I’m as good as shattered!” She slaps her hands over her mouth before she can control what she says, but to her surprise White Diamond laughs.

 

“Oh relax, little gem,” White Diamond replies, “we won’t send you initially. We’ll be placing a hive of robonoids in your care, both Flask and Plug patterns. Nothing too powerful - we don’t want those Crystal Gems figuring out what you’re doing by scanning for comm waves!”

 

“I still don’t think I’m going to do any good when they come face to face with me and all I have is some repair robonoids! I can’t do much with these,” she complains as she looks at her tiny, delicate limbs. Peridots are built for technological knowhow; they don’t need to be big or powerful to do their job. She looks at her peridot with a sudden rare flash of sympathy, and decides to help her out.

 

“Peridot, when this meeting is over, go to the machine-shops and hand this to the feldspars,” she orders as she hands the peridot a data wafer. “They’ll perform a significant upgrade to your manifestation protocols, free of charge.”

 

“Thanks, Noble Preceptor," replies the awe-struck peridot. "I am in your debt, my Preceptor.”

 

“Of course you are, you’re bonded to me. Anyway, your mission is to travel to the Galaxy Warp on Earth and repair the link with Silica. We’ll send a Shale-class frigate to deploy the drones; you can handle the rest. Once it’s rebuilt, go through and set up a forward base, and give the all clear. Jasper and the lazurite will go through the warp, rendezvous with you, and she’ll guide you from there.”

 

“My Preceptor,” Jasper asks, “where is the warp to Earth? All the main warp stations don’t have any warps pointing to an ‘Earth’.”

 

“We haven’t used it in five thousand years,” says White Diamond, “plenty of time for us to bury and forget it. We kept records of its location, though. Be careful, there’s rumours of undesirables running some sort of operation down there, so you may need to do some ‘house cleaning' first. It shouldn't be anything you cannot handle, but your patron will send backup, just in case.”

 

“Don’t worry, Noble Preceptors,” Jasper boasts as she cracks her knuckles, “I almost beat Rose Quartz and her pathetic excuse of a bodyguard during the battle for the Dark Heart. A few criminals don’t worry me.”

 

“Good. Once you’re through, find the Gems, and kill them. You should have no trouble with that, Jasper, but just in case,” she pauses as she summons an item from her personal vault, “here.”

 

Jasper's eyes widen in awe as she hands her personal gem destabilizer to her. It’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, created out of gold and powered by a pearl who dared to disobey her. She picks it up and presses a button, and it neatly folds in on itself. Jasper places it on the table and bows to her patron.

 

“Thank you, my Preceptor. I fight with your blessing, using this.”

 

“You have always fought with my blessing, Jasper. Now, to the lazurite-”

 

“Lapis,” the lazurite and White Diamond correct at the same time.

 

“... _Lapis Lazuli_. Once the peridot’s cleared the way on the Earth side, and Jasper on the Silica side, you’re the guide. Show them where the Crystal Gems are hiding and help destroy them, and you’ll get your reward.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Dear,” White Diamond chimes in, “we wouldn't still be here if we were gems of our word. Now,” she states as she silently pleads with Blue Diamond not to laugh, “I think that’s all there was to say. You’re all dismissed,” she utters with a snark as they stand up and bow to each other.

 

“Remember," Blue Diamond adds as a final statement, "we’re doing this not out of vengeance, or bloodlust.”

 

“I-”

 

“Jasper, you might be doing it for that, but we’re all doing it for the sake of DiamAuth, and the people. By eradicating the Crystal Gems, we’re saving billions of lives, and ensuring that we, all of us, are secure from outside threat.”

 

“...Yes, Preceptor.”

 

“I think your visit has ended, ladies," White Diamond gently reminds them. "You all know the exit by now, I'm sure you don't need my assistance! Except you, of course, dear,” she adds as the lazurite tries to rush out of the room. “I would like a nice chat with you. A nice, _long,_ chat.”

 

They part ways with Blue Diamond at the docking bay and return to the Spire of Gold, the peridot bowing deeply before she heads to the machine-shops on the lower levels. Jasper and her continue until they reach another docking bay, where a shuttle hovers above a platform of crystal infused brass. Three carnotites stand guard by the shuttle, bowing as the two of them approach. She can see two more of the warrior-clades sitting in the shuttle, one with a yellow topknot of hair coming out of her lead chromate suit. They're poring over a map of some sort.

 

“This is where we part ways for now, Jasper.”

 

“I will serve you with utmost care, my lord Preceptor,” she replies as she bows, kissing her on a signet ring. “I’ll take that warp pad in the name of our Lattice.”

 

“I expect nothing less from you. Carnotite Facet-1Y1D Recut-5RF has all the details and the maps surrounding this operation. And please, try not to get any of them shattered. The carnotite recutting process is really quite expensive.”

 

“I led your forces during the Quartz Schisms, Noble Preceptor. I sunk Atlantis in your name! Trust me, my Preceptor, I can lead a five-gem squad.”

 

“I have no doubt that you can. The honour of our Lattice and the safety of our people is resting on your shoulders. Claim this warp pad, and we move one step closer to ensuring that the Yellow Lattice will remain dominant forever. Good luck, my old friend.”

 

“I won’t let you down, Yellow Diamond,” she assures her with a salute. “You have my word.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I got a new fic up and running!
> 
> I always loved the villains in shows like these, and I always loved cyberpunk sci-fi. I sought to combine the two into a fic explaining the reasons behind Homeworld's renewed investigations into the Crystal Gems, as well as show everyone my own interpretation of life on the Homeworld. Spoilers: it isn't that nice.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy my fic as I enjoyed writing it! Leave a comment, a kudos, a bookmark, whatever you want!
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> Clade: The term for a group of gems falling under a certain role. These gems excel at that role above all else. For example, pearls are part of the servant-clade because they're designed to be servants. The more militaristic you are the higher up in society you are. Under-clade is a derogatory term.
> 
> Preceptor: The title of the ruling three gems. Currently, the three Great Diamond sisters hold these titles.
> 
> DiamAuth: The government of the Homeworld, short for Great Diamond Authority.
> 
> Silica: The name of the Homeworld.
> 
> Vox-robonoid: A device designed to boost the volume of one's voice.
> 
> Facet-1A2B Cut-3CD: If there are more than one of the same gem in a room they name themselves by their facet of origin and time of cut (analogous to a birth). Gems organised in a military sense (e.g. a squad) refer to each other by a rising numerical count. Personal names are seen as disgusting in high gem society.
> 
> AtmosCom: Atmospheric Command. They monitor all the spaceships and space stations and satellites and get some very nice toys to play with.
> 
> Lattice: The equivalent of a noble house, or a royal family. The big three Lattices are those belonging to the Diamond sisters, though there are minor Lattices. You won't get anywhere unless you "bond" (pledge) yourself to one.
> 
> Gamma-staves: Radioactive quarterstaffs, signature weapons of the carnotites of the Yellow Lattice.
> 
> Heat-falchions: Falchions heated to temperatures hot enough to carve through a ship's bulkhead. One of the signature weapons of the Blue Lattice's azurites.
> 
> Las-serpentas: Short ranged energy pistols. One of the signature weapons of the Blue Lattice's azurites.
> 
> World-cracker: Supermassive spaceships. One blast from their main weapon can turn a planet the size of Jupiter into ash. The biggest ones can kill suns.
> 
> Shale-class frigate: Small ships, useful for harassing civilian ships/deploying drones. Not much use in a straight up fight, though.
> 
> Machine-shops: Place where the cool stuff gets made. Weapons? Cybernetics? Upgrading gems to do other things? You go here. They range from illegal backstreet rooms to the massive facilities of the Lattices.
> 
> Shuttle: Intra-planetary method of transportation. Way slower than a warp but gets you where a warp doesn't.


	2. The Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their team is made of heroes; First Facet is their codename, nearly ten thousand years of combined military experience, and they're the best of the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enhance your reading with this cyberpunk soundtrack!
> 
> Flight Over The Slums: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0UBdNfs35Q
> 
> Aggregate Thirteen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9lPJypStbI
> 
> The Under-Undercity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF1ChAdl0hY
> 
> The Wrath of Gold (Battle for the Warp Pad): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyjq9GVSPXg
> 
> The Spire of Gold (Yellow Diamond's theme): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRI70ToeEN8

The shuttle takes off, arriving over its destination, half a world away, in just twenty minutes

She grimaces as she looks down at the hyper-slums of Aggregate Thirteen, the shuttle orbiting high enough to avoid fire from the lawless wastes below. It’s an absolute dump, a nightmare sprawl of shacks, energy pylons and hab-towers covered in gang holograms, smaller than the surrounding aggregates but far denser, and they have to break through the surface to get to its under-undercity, a small part of the vast, gravity-crushed construct within the hollow interior of Silica. She frowns at the thought of what could be waiting down there.

“It’s a real pile of rough stones, isn’t it?”

Carnotite-Oh-One (for gems on a military operation hide their names) sits opposite her, the gem’s face hidden by a thick lead chromate helmet. A yellow diamond projecting out of the top of the helmet signifies her as the squad’s commander. The only indication of a gem inside there is the blinding yellow light that shines out of her vision slit.

“It's got a whole bunch of nicknames; _Cutter's Blade,The Drop, Freetown_. DiamAuth gave up on policing it centuries ago; too much crime and corruption for their amethysts and obsidians to handle. Only the nastiest of gems make it out of here,” she continues, voice distorted by the radiation and the suit into a mechanical gurgle, “and I should know. I was made here.”

“How? This aggregate's nowhere near Silica's Kindergarten.”

“Who said anything about Kindergartens? The gangers have their own low-scale facilities which they use to create their armies. I was born in service to the Crimson Lustre gang, nearly a thousand years ago."

"I've never heard of them."

"That's because I shattered them all. That got me the Preceptor’s attention, and now here I am, serving alongside none other than the Fusionkiller.”

“I haven’t heard that name in a while.” The last time she heard it was on the Red Sister. All those years ago...

“Really? We call you that all the time! At least, when you’re out of earshot, ma’am.”

“I don’t mind it.” She smiles. “That name really does take me back.”

The shuttle continues over the seething masses of gemkind. She looks down, disgusted at the squalor of the under-clades as they wage their own petty wars with each other over land, weapons, drugs, money. It merely confirms what she's known all along - without the guiding hand of DiamAuth, Silica would be a world populated only tribal savages. Just like Earth, that org-infested ball of carbon and mud. As if on cue with that thought, Oh-One pipes up.

“Fusionkiller, if you’ll pardon me asking...what were the Quartz Schisms like?”

She's startled by the direct nature of that question, especially coming from an under-clade, but she admires her bluntness. She's also intrigued by her apparent predictive ability, and decides to test her.

“How dare you think that I’ll just go out and tell anyone about those years!” Carnotite-Oh-One doesn't react. Instead, she leans towards her, steepling her fingers as she tenses in preparation for-

“Those years were glorious,” she continues, smiling at the way the warrior-clade relaxes, as if she silently confirms something she knew was going to happen all along. “Rose Quartz was a weakling and an orgsop, but both her and her views were unbelievably popular. Earth wasn’t the only world that was fought over. Every corner of the Crystal System burned, Silica especially. The Siege of the Spire of Flowers lasted half a century, and by the time we destroyed her stronghold Silica was a polluted wasteland. Really, the only reason why the war lasted so long was because of her numbers. Billions of gems from dozens of Lattices, weaklings all, went over to her, and she wasn't afraid to conscript humans either. They’re nothing but mindless, cladeless orgs, but they fight like corrupted gems when they’re scared or angry enough. I lost plenty of friends to humans.”

“I...I’m sorry to hear that, Fusionkiller.”

“Don’t be. They were weak to fall to such delicate creatures. And I cannot tolerate weakness." She leans back in the seat. "I think that will be enough for now. Read the files if you want something in-depth."

They fly in silence for another two minutes before she decides to ask a question that's been burning in her mind since that little display of Oh-One's, and the carnotite tenses again before she asks it. "You were recut from a sapphire, weren't you?"

"Yes, Fusionkiller," Oh-One replies. "The Preceptor thought having someone capable of seeing the future would be an asset to her. How could you tell?"

"Call it intuition," she grins. "I take it everyone else on our team's a recut?"

"You can't just create a carnotite, ma'am," the carnotite identifying as Oh-Four replies in a soothing tone. "Carnotites have to be cut from other gems; to make gems as radioactive as us in a Kindergarten would pollute the entire structure. Only the best are considered for recutting. I used to be an amethyst, for example. Killing the hive lord of a yaxpatosi migration going through the Aphix Coil got me here."

The other carnotites tell her about how they earned a recut. Oh-Five was a peridot whose impeccable hacking skills saw the destruction of the Spire of Night, and the Black Lattice along with it. Oh-Two was a pearl who took out fifty gems while defending Yellow Diamond during the Kamacite Interregnum. Oh-Three was a ruby who shut down the antimatter reactor of the world-cracker _Yellow Death_ from the inside as it was about to go critical, saving Silica from destruction. Their team is made of heroes; _First Facet_ is their codename, nearly ten thousand years of combined military experience, and they're the best of the best.

"Our Preceptor must really want this warp pad if she's sending us to do the job," Oh-Five ponders, her voice further warped to an emotionless, mechanical growl by whatever cybernetic enhancements she's had. "We haven't seen a mission like this in centuries."

"I know, right," Oh-Three replies in a hoarse, radiation-laced whisper. "I've been on guard duty for far too long. It's gonna be real nice to smash some gems for the Preceptor."

“Glad to hear that, Oh-Three,” she replies as the pilot, an anatase connected to the shuttle with a wireless HUD component of her helmet, gives an arm signal. She doesn't understand its meaning, but it’s the cue for a Oh-Two to switch on a holographic projector in the middle of the shuttle. The shuttle banks downwards as it heads to a massive ventilation shaft, the undercity below it glimmering like stars, hab-towers hanging from the roof like crystals in a cave. It looks even grottier than the surface of the Aggregate.

“We’re landing here,” Oh-Two, her voice unaffected by the radiation, states as she points to the roof of a squat hab-tower deep in the under-city, the upper floors converted into a stim-zone, gang holograms blaring out of the windows, “and we’ll need to push our way down into the nearest entrance to the under-undercity, which is here,” her finger poking through to a small hole nearly five clicks away from their landing point. From there, we keep going until we hit the warp pad.” The map is replaced by a flickering symbol; an octagon with a vertical line on either side, parallel to each other. “The warp pad is in the territory of the Refiners, a religious death cult. They believe that by cracking their gems in certain places, they can change their clade, and ultimately ascend to diamondhood. As you can imagine, plenty of corruptions in their ranks, and the few that still have their form are completely insane.”

“Crackedheads, huh? They’ll be easy to deal with.”

“This cell is led by a fusion," she continues as the image of a white, four-eyed gem appears on the holo-display. "It calls itself Rhinestone, and it's estimated that the thing is responsible for the disappearance of over a hundred gems. It believes that it's very close to becoming a diamond, and if it somehow succeeds in its mad quest for power, we'll be facing a war the size of the Quartz Schisms."

"It's nothing more than a weak-minded monster at the head of an army of weaklings, but we won’t be so weak as to underestimate them, Fusionkiller.”

“Good. Attack to shatter. Put the Refiners out of their misery. Take Rhinstone or any of her fuse partners alive. We'll show the Crystal System what happens when you challenge us.”

She can tell that Oh-One's grinning, despite her lead visor blocking her face from view.

"Very good, Fusionkiller. Once the warp-pad's secure, Anatase over here," she indicates to the pilot who gives a thumbs up, "will extract us. Don't worry about the fact the pad's underground; she assures me she has a plan."

“You're right that I do. Don't worry, girls, Anatase over here'll get you out." The under-clade speaks in a cocky tone that she instantly takes a like to; she likes it when the under-clades have some personality to them.

The shuttle begins to slow down as it nears the converted hab-tower, a hundred-storey building with technicolour lights flashing out of the massive glass window facing towards them. The carnotites check their gems and their equipment, ensuring they're ready to summon their weapons at any time. Oh-Five straps a keypad and holographic projector to her wrist, wirelessly connected to a power pack on her back; the latest in portable hacking technology.

"Thirty seconds until drop, over-clades,” the anatase reminds the squad as she lowers the shuttle over the hab-tower's roof. “Word of advice, ladies; keep your weapons outta sight until you hit the under-city; you’re going to attract as much attention as a ten-gem fusion in the Parliament with your getup, you don’t need any more heat.”

“That’s exactly what we want,” she replies. “If the Preceptor wanted this to be more covert, she’d have sent her spies.”

“Ma’am, Anatase is right,” Oh-Two replies. “Aggregate Thirteen has no respect for our authority, and the gangs have vast amounts of gems at their disposal. If we pull our weapons and start shattering every gem we see, we’ll be in a dry mine without a drill. Keep a quiet profile; this place will see justice soon enough.”

She nods in understanding as the shuttle lands on the roof of the hab-tower, and the energy fields on either side of the shuttle dissipate.

“LZ is clear! Come on, over-clades, get moving!"

* * *

 

The six-gem team drops down from the shuttle, scanning the area for any signs of life as their transport takes off to hide in a safe area, ready to extract the team once they've finished the job. They move down a fire escape, shocking patrons as they pass by the massive window of the stim-zone. Even out here, they can hear the warbling alto of some unidentifiable fusion as it sings to the patrons, who are wiped out of their minds on Quarry, Rockslide and dozens of other drugs, an upbeat yet relaxed song playing from the speakers at a volume so loud it rattles the positively ancient set of metal stairs.

“Is it Classics Hour here or something,” Carnotite-Oh-Two jokes as they progress down the side of the tower. “Seriously, these beats are three thousand years old.”

“Since when were you an expert in music?” Carnotite-Oh-Three chides her as they drop from the highest floor the gangs control to a roof below them and from there to ground level, a side alley leading out into the main streets of the Aggregate's undercity. “You have as much taste as a fusion.”

“I used to be a pearl, remember? We have to know how to sing. Or has the radiation already started cracking your gem?”

“Are you two gemlings or are you in need of another refacet? Cut the chatter!” The two carnotites freeze; evidently, they had forgotten they were broadcasting over the squad-level comms.

“Apologies, ma'am,” they stutter, bowing so deeply they nearly fold on themselves.

“Save your grovelling for later,” she replies, waving them away with a gesture. “We have a mission to complete! Form up behind me; we’ll have to march there.”

She and her squad progress through the undercity of the hyper-slums, marching in single formation with the noble-clade at their head. The squalor here is so bad it makes the Aggregate above look like paradise. The destitute gems that crowd the streets eye them with some mixture of terror, disgust and indifference, and more than a few gems rush into their shacks they call home and lock the doors. Others yell insults against them and their Lattice, and the bravest gangers try to rush them. After the first fifteen public crushings, they're given a wide berth. Nobodies line the streets, gems one crack away from corruption begging passer-bys for creds to blow on Slurry or an hour with the malfunctioning pearls that line the street corners who whisper promises of fusion to anyone who'd listen. Gangers accumulate in the bars and side alleys, all with hairline cracks and facet-patterns across their bodies, their mohawks and braids dyed every colour of the rainbow, weapons permanently manifested into pockets and belt loops. A few even wear jewellery created from the remains of those who defied them.

"This place is foul," Oh-Two spits out as some abomination that was once a ruby scuttles away from them on barbed pseudopods. "If only we could eradicate this place and its people!"

"Aggregate Thirteen is a disgrace," she agrees. "Once this business with the warp pad is done, I'll do everything I can to convince DiamAuth to burn this place to ashes."

They turn off into a side road, sending the gangers who gather there running for their lives. The squad pays them no mind, as they navigate their way through a labyrinth of back alleys, maglev tunnels and stairwells, going deeper and deeper into the Aggregate. The walls shift from dirty crystal to verdigris-slick copper to crumbling masonry.

As they progress closer and closer to the under-undercity entrance, she notices that the symbol of the Refiners has started to appear with worrying regularity, scratched into the walls or faceted into holographs. Nihilistic, self-destructive slogans cover every surface, and as they reach the entrance to the under-undercity they can see that someone has constructed a shrine by the gate; a crystal basin filled to the brim with gem shavings, some of which are fused together. Oh-Three starts to retch, visor opening as she doubles over to spit something out, the carnotite's back facing her in an attempt to hide her weakness. Oh-Four reaches her hand into the basin, trying to bubble as many shards as she can in order to close missing person files and keep DiamAuth running that little bit smoother. Everyone has to do what they can to keep the system going.

“Refiner scum,” mutters Oh-One as Oh-Two moves to help Oh-Four. “Crackedheads took my Injector-mate and turned her into a monster. I’m going to take my sweet time with them.”

“Do not let your emotions take hold of you,” she orders as Oh-Five gets to work by a keypad next to the gate, attempting to crack the security programs that keep the gate shut. “That is a weakness you cannot afford to have when we get into battle with these cultists.”

“Of course, Fusionkiller.”

“Oh-Five, how’s the crack going?”

“I know you know I used to be a peridot, ma'am, but I’ve never encountered anything like this since the Spire of Night. Door’s been sealed tight with darklight protocols. Where did they even get those? I thought that stuff was DiamAuth only. Whoever these Refiners are, they've got high-up friends.” The carnotite stands up, the holographic projection above her wrist fizzling out of existence.

“It can’t be done. I’d need to get my decking rig from the spire or become a peridot again to deal with this. Looks like we’ll have to find another way-”

She sighs impatiently, marching towards the door and pushing the carnotite aside. Her helm manifests around her head, and with a yell she crashes through the door at full speed, the metal exploding inwards from her momentum.

“Or we could blow the doors off, I guess,” deadpans Oh-Five, sidestepping through the ruins of the great gate, followed by the other carnotites. 

* * *

 

The under-undercity is pitch black; a claustrophobic maze of ancient ruins, tunnels and basements made out of materials that have been obsolete for millennia. The Refiners have stencilled their sigil everywhere; hollows in the ground and in the walls filled to the brim with gem shards. Every now and then they spot an ancient version of the DiamAuth symbol mounted on the walls; a pink rhombus underneath the blue and yellow ones. She furrows her brow when she sees the symbols, and the carnotites wisely keep their mouths shut. They remain alert as they move through great crypts filled with aeons-old shards and empty cathedrals to long-forbidden goddesses, the Refiner symbol shadowing them like a desperate lover.

The first sign of life they find is a fire, a beryl with a cracked gem and too many limbs huddled next to it trying to stay warm, the Refiner symbol faceted into the thing’s chitinous shoulder. It notices the squad far too late, and she snatches the thing by its throat, lifting it up.

“Unidentified citizen of Aggregate Thirteen," she accuses as the beryl struggles against her iron grip. "You stand accused of perverting the purity of your form, civil disobedience and refusal to acknowledge DiamAuth. The punishment for your crimes is shattering, but your death may be less agonising if you tell us what your sisters are doing here. Why are the Refiners trespassing on DiamAuth property?”

The beryl spits in her face.

“You don’t frighten me, tyrant! You cannot comprehend our cause! We will ascend to the absolute authority of the diamonds, and your spires will bu-”

It gasps as she crushes its neck in her hand. The half-corruption barely has time to scream before its form disintegrates out of existence. She envelopes the gem in a bubble, sending it straight to the torture pits of the Yellow Lattice, deep under the Spire of Gold.

“They’re worse than I thought,” Oh-One realises as they continue towards the warp pad. “I had no idea that they had developed such...independence.”

“They’re weak. Their corruptions, both physical and mental, hinder them, and they will be no match for the likes of us."

“Yes, Fusionkiller.”

The squad progresses through the darkness of the under-undercity, gamma-staves summoned from their gems, ready to be activated. She has the destabiliser that her patron bestowed to her in her hand, her helm manifested around her gem. As they near the entrance to the warp pad, they start to hear a faint chanting, and the carnotites tighten their grips on their weapons.

The pre-Schism symbol of DiamAuth lies in the dust, "IMPOSTORS” scribbled over every inch of the heraldry. In its place lies an octagon with a single line on either side, parallel to the other. It is the colour of refracted light, and to their horror made out of crushed gems. A low, sonorous chanting in a dead language can be heard from beyond the passageway. Thankfully, there’s no guards; something important must be happening to have the entire cell be present. She gives a grim nod to Oh-One, who takes Oh-Two and Oh-Three and climbs a ruined set of stone stairs that jut out from the antechamber beyond the door. The other two carnotites follow her as they march towards the chanting. From a hole in the antechamber’s wall they move into a set of narrow stone corridors, completely devoid of life, flickering candles providing the barest minimum of light. Just how old was this place?

Oh-Four opens a door and immediately hugs the wall, Oh-Five and her following suit. The door leads directly into the warp pad arena, which is filled to nearly maximum capacity with Refiners, all chanting and swaying, praising a robed figure that stand on the warp pad. She fights a wave of nausea as she realises that every single one of them is corrupted in some way. Armed guards of every clade patrol the thronged masses, carrying a wide mixture of weapons. Some carry bits of pipe or even rock. Many have nothing but mindless devotion.

“Fusionkiller, this is Oh-One. We’re in position overlooking the ceremony. Their leader is about to start a speech. It might be Rhinestone. Do we have permission to engage?”

“No.. I can handle this by myself.”

“Fusionkiller, with all due respect, are you completely crac-”

But before her carnotite guard can stop her, she stands up and marches straight into the crowd, Oh-Four and Oh-Five whispering curses through their teeth.

“Refiners," she booms as she activates her destabiliser, sending the cultists around her scattering to safety. The air is filled with the sounds of weapons being drawn out of gems and hurled insults, as three onyxs rush onto the warp pad, huge mauls carried in their hands. From behind its hulking bodyguards, the fusion laughs.

“And so the great tyrants have come to send their lapdogs to harry us out of existence! DiamAuth has finally recognised our claim to Silica is the only true claim, and look how they struggle to keep us contained, to keep us oppressed! Tell me, oh blind one, how does it feel to know that your days in power are numbered?”

“Unidentified citizens,” she continues, ignoring the vast amounts of verbal abuse that's hurled at her, “you all stand accused of civil disobedience, refusal to respect the DiamAuth and trespass on DiamAuth property, as well as ritualistic mutilation and murder. The sentence for these crimes is embedding and or death, depending on the personal severity of your actions. How do you plead?”

“Plead?” The hooded fusion chuckles. “We are not guilty of anything. We are ascending our clade-made forms to something greater, and you cannot stop us!”

“You plead not guilty. You are lying, and the punishment for lying in front of a member of the Yellow Lattice,” she grins as her helmet and destabiliser appear out of nowhere, “is death! NOW!”

And as one unit, the carnotites stand up and rush or jump into the crowd, their ugly armour opening up like flowers to reveal the beauty within.

They are completely perfect beings, terrifying in their absolute beauty, their poisoned gems positioned at the centre of their chests, the yellow rhombus faceted into their foreheads. They blaze like dying yellow suns as radiation of all types seeps out from them and into the surrounding Refiners, who scream as their gems melt like wax from the radiation and heat, striking them down for daring to look at the true form of the carnotites. Others shriek as their bodies take on horrific forms as their gems warp into unrecognisable shapes, the gamma particles corrupting them far more efficiently than a blade ever could. The gamma-staves start swinging out, shattering gems and disintegrating bodies as they try and fail to withstand the form-crushing impact of the radioactive quarterstaffs.

Oh-Two simply laughs, her radiation melting a swathe of corrupted once-gems while Oh-Four screams vindications and curses as she duels an onyx, ducking and weaving under her maul as she slams her gamma-stave into the Refiner’s ams. Oh-Three recites the teachings of DiamAuth as she punches straight through some abomination of a gem and rips it apart, crushing the twisted gem in her hand. Oh-Five is silent, her gamma-stave sending precise blasts of multispectral radiation into the guards that line the balcony, who try to bring las-serpentas and electro-fusils to bear against the carnotites. They are unstoppable angels of vengeance, sweeping aside the screaming waves of cultists like rocks against the tide.

With Oh-One at her back, she charges towards Rhinestone, who backs away as two onyxs step between them, who raise their mauls and bring them crashing down towards her. She roll out of the impact zone, kicking upwards into an onyx’s jaw as she does so. As the brute of a gem reels backwards from the blow, she leaps onto its chest and smashes her helmet into the cultist’s face, leaving a cratered ruin that disintegrates as the onyx retreats to her gem. As she crushes the gem to powder beneath her heel, she throws her destabilizer into the side of another onyx attempting to crush Oh-One’s form. The device connects, the energy sending the bodyguard into convulsions as it is ripped apart by the destructive electromagnetic forces. Oh-One takes the opportunity to smash the cultist’s legs out from under her with a sweep of her gamma-stave, before she delivers a crushing overhand blow right into the gem itself, shattering the gem’s illusory form like glass.

“Carnotites! Keep the rabble busy, I’m going after their leader!”

Oh-One leaps into combat beside Oh-Two, who struggles to put down a massive corruption that has teeth in place of everything. Rhinestone attempts to make a hasty retreat, pushing forward cultists and corruptions in her pursuer's path. She brushes them aside like insects, her helmet sending them flying through the air and into walls, shattering on contact, and she makes a desparate leap forward and catches the fusion by its robes. Rhinestone desperately discards them in a mad attempt to escape, revealing its true form.

“Rhinestone,” she spits as two pairs of eyes stare defiantly at her. "Your mad crusade ends here, you hollow, weak, shell of a gem!”

The creature struggling in her grasp simply laughs. “You think fusions are weak? You ignorant fool. I am stronger than you in ways you can only imagine!”

The punch the fusion delivers is hard enough to make her double over in pain, loosening her grip just enough for the abomination to squirm its way out of her grasp and deliver a spinning kick to her head. She crashes to the floor, her vision spinning, but manages to roll away from a coup de grace that would have shattered her gem irreparably. She springs to her feet as the fusion pulls out a wickedly-sharp greatsword from a gem mounted on its back, taking a half-sword stance to give itself more control over the unwieldy weapon.

“Fusion is but the final step on the path to diamondhood! I am far purer than your precious Preceptors could ever be!”

The blade thrusts towards her neck, yet she manages to duck at the last minute, summoning her helmet as she deflects the next blow with a well-timed headbutt, following the defensive maneuver with a punch to the fusion’s stomach. As Rhinestone doubles over, she grabs the creature’s head and slams her knee into the fusion’s nose, before cracking the thing’s skull against the wall. It moans in pain as she circles around it, laughing.

“Pure! Hah,” she boasts, sidestepping a desperate swing from the confused fusion, “you’re weaker than anything I’ve ever fought against! Just how pathetic do you have to be, to be desperate enough to fuse and still be a complete failure?”

Rhinestone screeches in rage, switching to a full-sworded stance as it raises the greatsword high over its head. Before it can bring the blade down, she grabs all four of its wrists with one hand and punches itin the side of the head with her other fist. The fusion goes down like a sack of rocks, its sword clattering out of existence, yet the creature recovers quickly enough to dodge her kick, summoning another greatsword out of the same gem. She jumps over the foot-high sweeping attack the fusion attempts to pull off, unsheathing her destabiliser quickly enough to parry an underhanded swing as the Refiner rises to her feet. The fusion breaks off, laughing as it raises the greatsword in a defensive stance.

“Such a childish weapon. Where is the skill in using such a toy? It seems that it is you who is weak, to depend on such a token!”

“I don’t need this thing to deal with you,” she retorts as she sheathes the destabiliser again, slamming her fingers into the fusion’s elbow at the last moment to prevent her from completing another overhanded attack. “I can break you with just my fists!”

Rhinestone laughs at her confidence, thrusting its sword forwards in an attempt to skewer her like a piece of meat. She sidesteps the blow, bringing her hand down onto the flat of the blade hard enough to snap it in two. Before the fusion can materialise another blade, she picks the cultist leader up by her body and slams her into a wall, and headbutts her so hard the creature nearly defuses on the spot. She moves her grip up to the fusion’s throat, and begins to squeeze.

“You disgusting under-clade abomination,” she practically screams as the fusion tries to lessen her hold, “you think you can take on me? I fought in the Quartz Schisms, and I killed dozens of fusions like you. No fusion is stronger tha-”

The blade slides in at a point between where a human’s ribs would be, driving forwards so deep that she is nearly impaled from tip to pommel, and she gasps at how _cold_ the sword is. The fusion puts a foot against her chest, and pushes her off the blade. She collapses to her knees, desperately trying to hold herself together, staving off the inevitable retreat to her gem. Her mind is racing as Rhinestone stands over her, four eyes gleaming like LEDs as it reverses its grip on the blade and prepares to deliver a murder-stroke, the pommel resting on her shoulder as it is lifted up and driven _down_ -

And is parried by a gamma-stave, sparks flying as the radiant figure in front of her pushes the sword down into the ground and cracks the fusion across the face with her quarterstaff, radiation seeping into the Refiner’s gems. The leader swings wildly as gamma-particles erode her fusers, two panicked strokes that are easily deflected by the confident Oh-One, a brilliant angel of death, glorious is her majesty, and as she kicks the fusion’s legs out from under it and brings the tip of her gamma-stave rushing towards the abomination's head it thrusts forwards where her guard is open and slices Oh-One’s gem in half.

She screams with rage as the carnotite’s light flickers while she falls to her knees, a serene expression on her face. Her arms vanish.

“Fusionkiller, I-I knew this would...me or you... _cck_!”

The carnotite trails off as her light goes out and her form disintegrates, her gem shattering neatly into two pieces. They spin on the floor like old metal coins, and she is filled with unspeakable fury.

Rhinestone laughs as it cleans the blade with the edge of its two-forked tongue before she tackles the fusion and pins it onto its stomach, grabbing a gem as she does so. Even as she starts to pull, the fusion grins.

“You failed to protect your underling! I am not so weak as to be bested by your elite guard! And I certainly won’t be bested by you!”

Rhinestone tries to flip her onto her back, but fails, and as she continues to pull on its gem the fusion notices that there are no more Refiners. The snide expression is replaced with one of fear.

“You foul being,” she spits as she continues to pull on one of the gems, a lazurite’s gem, and the fusion starts to scream. “I’m far stronger than you will ever be!”

“No! You cannot, you _will_ not stop my ascension,” the fusion screeches as it starts to glow white-hot, the two gems beginning to separate. “You cannot stop me!”

“Yes, I, _can_!”

With a final tug, the gem is ripped out of the fusion. Rhinestone wails as it loses form, a lazurite appearing in her grip, an orthoclase pinned underneath her. The orthoclase takes one look at the struggling lazurite and nearly starts sobbing.

“Please, show her mercy,” the noble-clade begs as the lazurite starts to choke, her neck slowly being squeezed out of existence. “It was all me, it had nothing to do with her. Please, oh great over-clade, don’t hurt her! Don’t…”

And, pinned under her weight, the orthoclase can only watch as she moves her iron grip around to the lazurite's back and crushes her gem like an insect. The lazurite’s cry of agony is cut off as her form shatters like a mirror, and the orthoclase howls with grief.

“She didn’t - she couldn’t - _why?!_ ”

“Because, you grovelling piece of flint,” she replies, punching a fist straight through cult leader's chest, “mercy is a flaw, and your disturbing attachment to your dead slave nothing more than pure weakness. I am so much stronger than you.”

The orthoclase sighs as her form disintegrates, rushing into her gem to undergo emergency repairs to her form. She picks the gem up and concentrates, forming an ochre bubble of energy around the orthoclase. At a clench of her fist the gem disappears, teleported to one of the Spire of Gold’s oubliettes to await a fate worse than death. She grins once the act is done. The Yellow Lattice has prevailed.

It’s at this point that she begins to feel the hole in her side again, the energy from the fight wearing off. She grunts, falling onto the dusty surface of the warp pad as her form begins to destabilise. The remaining carnotites approach her, utterly exhausted, their light fading as they slowly reattach their armour. They are up to their ankles in shattered gems, which lines the floor like a vibrant carpet of bones.

“Ma’am,” a sullen Oh-Two replies. “We’ve done it. The warp pad is ours. Our shuttle’s waiting for us.”

As if on cue, the roof explodes, their shuttle flying down the massive gem-made hole above them. It comes to a hover beside the warp pad, energy fields on either side of the aircraft dissipating.

“Good. Yellow Diamond will be pleased," she eventually replies as she's helped onto the shuttle. She looks down at the shattered remains of Oh-One in her hands and her face falls.

We're not without our own casualties, though,” she grunts as her leg vanishes, Oh-Four bubbling the shattered carnotite to be sent to the Lattice’s crypt. “Oh-One may have sacrificed herself for us, but she did not die a weakling’s death. You have my word that she’ll be given a hero’s service.”

“You honour the squad, ma’am.” Oh-Two bows, before she takes a step back. “Ma’am, your form…”

“This?” She laughs at her injury, even as one of her arms turns into a cloud of smoke. “This is nothing. Merely my own...weakness...”

The last thing she sees is Oh-Two’s face, brilliant as the sun, her lead-covered hand covering her gem, an ochre flash of light.

Then darkness.

* * *

 

When she comes to, she is in her patron’s private quarters. She rests on the yellow sheets of a double bed, her head sinking into soft yellow pillows as she looks out at the twilight sky, tinted ochre by the thick yellow glass, gold running through it like the veins of some yellow beast.

Yellow Diamond looks out of the window, watching her world turn, her hands clasped behind her back. A pearl stands to her side looking over the room, and when she notices that she's risen the pearl gives a small cough, which is enough to make her Preceptor turn around. The pearl gives a bow and leaves the room as Yellow Diamond moves towards her.

“My dear,” she smiles.”Your mission was a success. My feldspars and peridots are reinforcing the pad as we speak. We have a secure connection, thanks to your squad and you.”

“I...I am honoured, my Preceptor." Her smile slackens. "One of the carnotites, she-"

"-gave her life in service of the Lattice against an insidious foe. Her sacrifice will be remembered. Her wake is tomorrow, if you'd like to attend. "

"I shall. Thank you for informing me, my Preceptor."

Yellow Diamond turns around, wearing a mischievous smirk that stirs her heart. She hasn't seen that smile in centuries. “Come, what are formalities between old friends? Yellow’s a good name, in private.”

“Yellow it is, then.” She finds herself sharing Yellow Diamond’s smile, and the Preceptor giggles, like a gemling at her first stim-zone. “I have something to show you. I think you might like it. Come on.”

 _When did this aspect of Yellow suddenly return_ , she wonders as the Preceptor of Peace pulls her by the hand to a massive vid-screen, as she switches it to a private, Lattice-only channel, as she points a finger and tells her to look. Yellow hasn’t behaved like this in millennia, not since she was due to even become the Yellow Diamond, back when she and her were _more_ than just two very powerful gems at the top of the political game, and she looks where Yellow is pointing her finger and she gasps at what she sees.

It’s Aggregate Thirteen, burning to ashes in the light of the setting not-sun, shuttles dropping kill-teams of carnotites and other warrior-clades bonded to the Yellow Lattice off on roofs littered with the rainbow sheen of the dead as they butcher everyone they find; corrupted, fused, ganger, cultist, citizen, they all are bathed in the actinic glow of the Lattice’s household guard, or melt under the fury of raging obsidians as they demolish buildings with their anger, or are pulverised by the great mauls of onyxs, who cackle as they crush entire injector-pod worths of criminals into dust. Where the kill-teams do not land, the bombers fly overhead, dropping fusion bombs and plasma mines onto areas too corrupt for her Lattice’s troops to land or down the ventilation shafts of the aggregate's undercity, turning entire districts into charnel houses, aflame with the colour of every gem. And of course, DiamAuth vid-robonoids orbit every inch of the burning aggregate, buzzing around a squad of carnotites as they hoist the gold-and-yellow over the tallest building in the aggregate, proclaiming to all who was responsible for this act of justice.

“Yellow, it’s...it’s fantastic.”

“I knew you’d like it,” the Preceptor replies sardonically as she slips her hands into hers, her breath hitching with pleasant shock. "Consider it your reward, or merely our retaliation against crimes beyond counting. Either way, this is a time for celebration."

Yellow Diamond turns to face her. She is utterly beautiful, and she can't help but lean into her, pushing into the gem so hard they nearly break the vid-screen, hands desperately running over each other's backs.

“This is the dawn of a new age, Jasper,” Yellow exhales, breathless as they break the kiss. “For too long, my sisters and I have held the Crystal System in the balance. Aggregate Thirteen is only the beginning. We will bring the Crystal Gems to justice, and I will burn their precious Earth to ash in the stellar wind while they watch. And then, we will focus on my sisters. The Spire of Mirrors and the Spire of Ice will fall before our legions. And you, my dear, will lead my armies to victory, as you did all those years ago.”

“My Preceptor," she replies as they move towards the great yellow bed, her back sinking into the mattress, her Preceptor clambering onto her, "it would be my honour. I won’t ever fail you, Yellow. I love you.”

And as they kiss again, the glow of the vid-screen footage playing across their skin,Yellow moaning her name as her lips drift down towards her gem, Jasper reassures herself that what she’s feeling isn’t some sort of weakness, something that opens her up to assault.

What she’s feeling is strength.

And it’s glorious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A.N: One rule for the rich, another for the poor. 
> 
> also im trash who cant write romance scenes at all
> 
> Basically I am on holiday right now so writing and communicating and all that stuff is an absolute pain. Next update will have to be when I am back from holiday, so about ten days. Thanks for all the comments, kudos and bookmarks!
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> Gemling: Young gem.
> 
> Aggregate: An area roughly equivalent to a district or a sector.
> 
> Undercity: The area underneath the surface area of a city. Usually where the under-clades of an aggregate live. Grimy and crime-filled.
> 
> Under-undercity: The area underneath an undercity. Derelicts, forgotten basements, ruins of the Crystal Gems. Pitch black, only vagrants live here.
> 
> Hyper-slums: Massive area converted into slums. Think every favela in Brazil crushed together size. Plenty of gems live in these zones.
> 
> Hab-tower: Massive towers where poor gems live. The gangers like to give their hab-towers names such as "The Spire of Shards" and other pleasant titles.
> 
> Ganger: Criminal belonging to a street organisation. Usually warrior or servile-clades discharged from service due to cracks or corruption. Gangs are often paid by the Lattices to do their dirty work, while the largest gangs rival the power of minor Lattices.
> 
> Stim-zone: Relaxation area, where you can buy some drugs, sit down with a friend and listen to music while out of your mind. Completely government mandated of course.
> 
> Vid-robonoid: Autonomous camera drone, capable of moving around to follow or get a panoramic on something.
> 
> Roughstone: Insult, implies the object is valueless.
> 
> Vid-screen: Television.
> 
> Org: Organic being.
> 
> Orgsop: Someone who likes organics.
> 
> Cred: Unit of currency.
> 
> Quarry: Hallucinogenic, rubbed onto the gem.
> 
> Rockslide: Stimulant, etched onto the body.
> 
> Slurry: Relaxant, inhaled through the nostrils.
> 
> Cut, to cut, recut: To physically cut a gem in such a way as to change their clade. Extremely expensive and painful process.
> 
> Facet, to facet, refacet: To etch, burn, or otherwise modify a gem in such a way as to modify their form. Examples include facetting a pattern into a part of a body (like a tattoo).
> 
> Decking rig: High-tech computer used to hack into network systems.
> 
> Darklight protocols: Encryption designed to kill anyone attempting to break into it. The code to write these protocols are in the hands of DiamAuth.
> 
> Half-hand, full-hand, murder-stroke: RL greatsword techniques, look them up.
> 
> Electro-fusil: Assault rifle the fires bolts of white electricity. 
> 
> Fusion bomb: Bomb that deploys a force field before fusing a ton of hydrogen. Everything within the force field dies, no exceptions.
> 
> Plasma mine: Mine that airbursts superheated plasma over a wide area


	3. The Technician

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So she sits, and aimlessly scrolls through the holo-tablet, and when the faceless Feldspar Oh-One comes through the door and tells her that the refacetting chamber is ready for her she stands up without a word and follows her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully subscribe to the theory that Peridot is wearing cybernetics, and her actual form is something much smaller. As such, all non-augmented peridots in this setting are like little green alien nerds. You don't need a strong body if you'll be stuck in front of a computer for all your life.
> 
> Edit: My theory was half-right :D but i am not rewriting it. In this setting, she's a cyborg. No; a cyb...gem? Cybergem?
> 
> Enhance your reading with these recommended songs!
> 
> The Machine-Shops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNd7zk4pOT8&index=56&list=PLF8723BA
> 
> Refacetting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3iDv0D9T8o
> 
> The Test part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bjoNhPZutc&list=PLF8723BAE6F2F1B1
> 
> The Test part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BkAGow_ul4&list=PLF8723BAE6F2F1B1
> 
> Peridot v2.0 (The Spire of Gold): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRI70ToeEN8

She's never been this far down the Spire of Gold. She only realises this when the view that surrounds her disappears underground. Her descent is marked by the lights that dot the inside of the lift shaft, which zoom past like messenger-clades on hover-cycles. The lift she's in is very old-tech, but she doesn't have the privilege of using the spire's warp-pads. That's only reserved for the soldier and noble-clades of the Lattice, with a few notable exceptions. She hopes that she'll be one of those exceptions after her upgrade.

 

As she hurtles down into the massive underground complex beneath the spire, her thoughts turn to the machine-shops, and she twirls the refacet-wafer that her Preceptor gave her between her fingers. She's heard all sorts of rumours about that vast construction facility beneath the spire, about how there's aliens working there to pay the debts their species owe, about how anything they could ever want can be built there, about what happens to nosy little under-clades who ask too many questions. She thinks she's about to find out the answer to that last rumour. Will they really cut off all her limbs? She hopes not.

 

Her train of thought derails when the lift comes to a steady stop, the doors sliding open, an embedded pearl announcing that they had arrived, and she steps out into the reception blinking in wonder at what she sees, like a gemling out of their injector-pod for the first time.

 

In front of her is a brass desk, a feldspar sitting behind it tinkering with a personal project, her many arms holding tools and magnifying lenses as it fiddles with the unknowable device it rests on the desk. The room, like everything else in the spire, is yellow; gold floors with copper tiles forming a rhombus that takes up the entire floor of the reception, walls made of an unidentifiable yellow crystal composite, an ochre ambient light tainting everything a sickly yellow. The roof is made of the same yellow crystal as the walls, and she stares up at it gawking at what's going on above the reception room.

 

The machine-shops loom above the reception like world-crackers above a planet found wanting, the white-hot light of nano-lathes and fusion torches twinkling like lights in a cavern the size of an under-city. Shuttles, orbital fighters shaped like fists carrying payloads of sentient missiles in their knuckles, combat robonoids with whirring plasma-culverins and great drills, Injectors and even two destroyers shaped like the hands of some massive yellow goddess sit in cradles, suspended in the air by grav-impellers. Millions of flask robonoids swarm over the vehicles, building them with the assistance of huge robotic arms that weld areas too big for the robonoids to handle, or else spray the finished objects gold, a yellow rhombus stencilled onto prows and bonnets. Elsewhere, feldspars sit in huge rows making items for the Yellow Lattice to use or sell, such as simple rhombuses of yellow glass or gold-painted flint for the under-clades and gangers under their payroll to wear. A team of the gems oversee a recutting pod, the lucky onyx within gasping as she is transformed into a carnotite, one of the Preceptor's chosen angels, her thrashing form hidden by translucent crystal. She hopes that her refacet won't be that painful.

 

She somehow works up the courage to walk to the receptionist's desk, making a polite cough to attract the feldspar's attention. The feldspar looks up, as if she hadn't realised she was there the entire time. Like all feldspars, she is faceless; a harlequin pattern of bronze and pig iron stares blankly at her.

 

"Your type aren't allowed in the levels reserved for the machine-shops," she barks in a gruff tone, one of her six hands putting the device underneath the table as the other five steeple in front of her. "Shouldn't you be back up top working with the other midgets to keep the Preceptor's extranet stable?"

 

"Maybe if you didn't give me lip," she snaps back as she hands her the wafer, smirking as the feldspar brings the device up to what she assumes is eye level, analysing it like a piece of jewellery, "and actually took the time to be polite, you'd get an answer. But I think that thing answers any questions you might have."

 

"In all my years...never seen anyone from your clade get this level of upgrade. And from the Preceptor, no less!" The feldspar tilts her head in curiosity as two other feldspars appear from a door to her right, summoned by some unknown means.

 

"This will be very, _very_ interesting to watch, oh yes," the feldspar murmurs to herself as she shows off the wafer to her two colleagues, who look at her like a piece of junk in need of recycling.

 

"Rejoice, little one, for you are about to transcend your mortal form," one of the feldspars intones, her hands clasping together in some imitation of prayer. "You will ascend to the hallowed ranks of the Preceptor’s chosen few!"

 

"Ignore her," the third one chuckles, "she got cut too deep in her Injector-pod, and now she thinks she's some sort of org leader!"

 

"Oh-Two, Oh-Three, shush! We're wasting the Preceptor's time by standing around and chatting like gemlings in the Nursery. Come on, little under-clade," the feldspar presumably identifying as Oh-One continues as she grabs her arm and strides forwards while she struggles to keep up, the other feldspars whispering to each other behind her back, "let's refacet you into something _beautiful."_

 

They pass through an endless corridor of crystal reinforced with polished copper, brass, bronze and gold reliefs detailing the works and the symbols of the Yellow Lattice, the roof above continuing to provide a close-up view of the Yellow Lattice's massive machine-shop. They pass hundreds of doors, each leading to a different part of the complex, with such titles as _Shield Assembly Arrays, Embedding Racks, Org-tech Research Quarter_. Every door holds something that she finds incredibly intriguing, and knowing that she'll never get to visit and catalogue the secrets in this complex saddens her.

 

Eventually, they reach another door, _Refacetting & Recutting _etched into the brass panel above the brass door. The feldspar makes a lightning-quick movement with her hands, too fast for her eyes to see, and the door opens. They step into a room of yellow sapphire, a plain bench of yellow glass propped against a yellow wall in the corner. The feldspar turns to her with a predatory smile as she sits down.

 

"We're here," she states as her colleagues move through a door leading to the refacetting chamber. "Wait for me in here while I plug in your wafer and get the refacet program up and running. Don't worry," the feldspar adds when she notices that she's begun to panic, "the procedure is mostly painless, though you might experience some discomfort when we begin etching your gem."

 

"You'll do _what_ to my gem?!"

 

"Oh calm down you silly little thing, I did say it'd be painless, didn't I? You don't have to worry about a thing. My sisters and I have done this procedure to dozens of clades. Honestly, you'll be fine. I hope you enjoy your new body," she throws out as a last goodbye before she closes the door behind the pathway leading to the refacetting chamber.

 

 _Etching my gem? Those clods better know what they're doing_ , she worries as she scrolls through a holo-tablet on the table featuring newsreels and leisure-shows (all sponsored by the Yellow Lattice of course), not paying any real attention to them. She's both excited and terrified at what's waiting for her in that chamber. On one hand, she's always dreamt of upgrading her form with cybernetics, to have some sort of edge over her peers, to make herself feel like a valued asset of the Lattice and not some mindless under-clade too stupid to even realise they could do something other than work themselves to death. Her mind races with the possibilities of what they could upgrade her with. But that thought also terrifies her; as much as she is a fan of the idea of modifying her form, she doesn't want to lose anything permanently. She enjoys being able to touch things, and she doesn't want anything to take it away, thank you very much. But to refuse the refacet would be to disobey the Lattice, and to disobey the Lattice would displease her Preceptor, and that would be nothing short of suicidal. Better to have no limbs than no life.

 

So she sits, and aimlessly scrolls through the holo-tablet, and when the faceless Feldspar Oh-One comes through the door and tells her that the refacetting chamber is ready for her she stands up without a word and follows her.

 

The refacet chamber is a circular room rendered in gold, a gold operating table centred in the chamber. A nest of robotic limbs that she recognises as a Facetter hangs above the table, waiting for a spark of life to begin the refacet procedure. Cybernetic components rest on a bed suspended by a grav-impeller next to the operating table, inert pieces of metal and crystal waiting to be attached to her.

 

The feldspars makes her lie down on the table, limbs spread-eagled. Oh-One mutters quietly to herself as she picks up a holo-tablet, finger hovering over a red area, the other feldspars moving to control panels near the cybernetics and Facetter.

 

Oh-Three hovers above her while she makes final adjustments to her position, identified only by the vertical halving of her mask, the ochre on the right clashing with the ebony on the left. "Are you resting nice and comfortably?"

 

Hesitantly, she nods.

 

"Excellent," Oh-Three replies as Oh-One presses the red area on her holo-tablet. "Beginning refacet procedure to accommodate cybernetic compatibility etchings."

 

The feldspar returns to her console as restraints suddenly spring up around her limbs and head, locking them into place. She struggles fruitlessly, Oh-Two chanting in some alien tongue as she presses a switch on her control panel.

 

The Facetter above her jerks into life, limbs whirring as they descend, activating torches and drills momentarily as they undergo maintenance and debug routines. She gulps when she notices a diamond-bit drill whirring right above her gem. Her fear soon turns to outright panic when the drill slowly descends until it almost touches her head-mounted gem, and her thoughts are filled with images of her shattering like glass dropped from a great height, or her form corrupting as fatal errors course through her body. _Screw the Preceptor, no way was this clod going to drill her gem!_

 

"Hey! I've changed my mind, I really don't want to do this! Can you gems release me? Now?!"

 

"I'm sorry," Oh-One replies, her voice raised to drown out the monotone chanting of Oh-Two, "but we can't cancel the procedure once it's started. Speaking of the procedure, do try not to scream for this next bit."

 

"Why, you cl-"

 

Any thoughts of a suitable insult for the masked worker-clade in front of her vanishes as the drill punctures her gem.

 

It's an intensity of pain she's never felt before. A wave of unbelievable, wordless agony radiates out from her gem and through her limbs which burn like they've been dipped in acid. She ignores the feldspar's plea, screaming and screaming as the drill carves minute, unbelievably painful lines into her gem, preparing her for her cybernetic upgrades, refacetting her into something more and yet less than a gem. She can't feel her fingers. Oh-One tuts in irritation at her mewling while Oh-Two practically yells her unknowable, untranslatable prayer.

 

Eventually the refacet stops, the drill receding back into the Refacetter as she gasps with relief, filled with happiness that the pain has stopped, even if only temporarily. She sucks in air as she prepares to unleash a flurry of insults against the feldspars, looking to her left and gazing on her armless stump.

 

She doesn't have arms or legs anymore.

 

"Oh please, don't start again," Oh-One deadpans as she whimpers in abject horror, trying and failing to manifest her missing limbs as a  crystal-gun descends to her gem, the device holding a bubbling reserve of viscous yellow liquid, "I don't want to have to demanifest my ears. Speaking of screaming, this bit may also hurt considerably."

 

The drill is nowhere near as painful as the feeling of hot yellow crystal being poured into the tiny recesses in her gem, and the experience leaves her struggling to stay manifested, begging for it to stop in a hoarse whisper as essential changes are made to her gem to make her compatible with her new cybernetics, her amputated stumps transforming into ports, a hollow appearing around her eyes and ears for some sort of control visor. She thinks she's close to shattering when the crystal-gun stops, and recedes into the Facetter.

 

"Now for the cool part," Oh-Three promises as she begins to manipulate her control panel.

 

Robotic limbs grasp the cybernetic components resting next to her, bringing them into pre-programmes positions, one cylindrical piece of crystalline alloy for each stump, a thick green visor hovering over her eyes. The legs connect first, a jolt of electricity surprising her as they attach to her stumps. The arms are next, twisting on securely with the assistance of the robotic limbs that grasp the cybernetic limbs. Finally, the visor lowers onto her head, tinting her world a pale green.

 

"Cybernetic uplink successful," continues Oh-Three. "Activating augments."

 

A flash of white light, and the visor switches on. Her sight is filled with the yellow rhombus of her Lattice, before it shrinks into the upper-right corner of her vision. Numbers and readings fill the visor, stretching across the cybernetic as they bring up information on topics such as power outputs of the robotics above her, the status of her gem, a map appearing at the corner of her eye. It's an unbelievable amount of information, yet she finds herself processing it with ease. It's like her mind has been opened by the device, as if she's been uplifted into sentience from her seemingly primordial state of mind beforehand. It's an ecstatic feeling.

 

Her limbs switch on next, feeling suddenly rushing in from areas she'd thought she'd lost forever. Fingers appear on the edges of her cybernetic arms; not just holographs, but hard-light projections, tougher than her old, natural limbs. She gives them an experimental clench, grinning like an idiot as she feels them. She can remember configurations for them, as if she's had the metal prosthetics all her life, but she can't activate them. As a finishing touch, a limb lowers a small rhombus of inert yellow diamond banded at the very edges with gold into an appropriate hole in her chest, black bands of nanite-created ebony shooting out from it and around her shoulders, marking her as bonded to the Yellow Lattice.

 

The procedure complete, the robotic limbs ascend back into the Facetter, falling limp as Oh-Two deactivates the device with a verbal flourish. The restraint around her head comes loose and she rolls off the table, falling onto the floor in a tangle of metal and gem.

 

"Procedure complete," Oh-One announces as the two other feldspars de-manifest their masks, shaking hands as they help her to her feet with the other five limbs, helping her adjust to her new height. "Refacet successful."

 

Oh-Two grasps her by the shoulder, and she's glad that the worker-clade doesn't have to reach down to do so.

 

"Give thanks to the Preceptor, for it is by her will that you have been remade into something new, something better! Give glory to the Lattice with this new form!"

 

"Nice parts," Oh-Three giggles. She blushes as she enjoys the experience of being self-conscious for the first time since she stumbled out of her Injector-pod. "I never thought someone of your clade would look so good after a little refacet."

 

"Enough flirting, Oh-Three," Oh-One replies as she fiddles with her holo-display. "She needs to go through testing now."

 

"Ah, the great test! That great barrier to mark the worthy, and consign the unworthy to the eternity of oblivion!"

 

"A test? I wasn't told by the Preceptor that there would be a test!"

 

Oh-One laughs as the other feldspars grab her cybernetic arms.

 

"She never does."

 

* * *

 

 

Another half-hour passes by as they march to a door with _Testing Chamber_ stamped out in bronze symbols. The first ten minutes involve her trying to figure out how to walk again.

 

It's surprisingly easy; while she no longer has the same level of control or any sort of feeling as she did with her natural limbs, she eventually walks like she's been born with the cybernetic implants. She hopes that it's because she's a fast learner, though she knows it's because of what they did to her gem. It still smarts, and she's pretty sure she can hear the thing buzzing, like some insect on a garden world.

 

The march to the chamber is in silence, the feldspars refusing to answer her questions, though Oh-Three gives her a shy smile whenever she looks over at the feldspar. Oh-Two just whispers to herself.

 

Eventually they arrive, the four gems entering a brightly lit room, two doors in front leading to the chamber while the door on the right leads to the control room. Doubtless her remakers will be there, thinking up ingenious ways to push her to shattering point. She won't give them that pleasure. She'll prove to them and the Lattice that it was worth refacetting her.

 

"Wait here," Oh-One orders as the other two gems leave the way they came. "We need to bring the other applicant."

 

"Other applicant?"

 

"The tests we do require two gems, though one gem is sufficient to pass through most of the tests. As luck as would have it, someone is going through a recut today, and she's just got out of the chamber. She needs to be tested as well."

 

"That's...fine, I guess," she replies, annoyed that she's going to have to herd someone through the test. She prefers to work alone, but when the Lattice demands she works with someone she can't do much about that. "What sort of gem will I be 'assisting'?"

 

Before Oh-One can reply, the doors burst open, her test partner hunching her shoulders to avoid breaking the frame while six feldspars usher her in. Her face falls.

 

"You," the newly-made carnotite booms, her face unreadable behind her visor, blinding yellow light shining out from behind her vision slit. "You're my test-partner? Just great. Why do they always partner me with pathetic little under-clades?"

 

"Now now, Carnotite Oh-One," an unidentified feldspar admonishes as she backs away, feeling her refacetted gem to make sure it hasn't melted from the radiation, "you're letting your previous onyx personality take a hold of you, and you have to balance your former self with your new body, otherwise-"

 

"Don't tell me what to do,you chunk of pumice!" The carnotite raises a lead gauntlet to her eyes, the yellow light playing over it like an omniscanner. "I feel like I could fly though the stars in this form, or kill you all without breaking a sweat! What need do I have for this half-machine _runt_?"

 

That last jibe is directed at her, an open palm swinging out towards her, as if to show the feldspars just how weak she really is. In her old form, she would have cowered, perhaps, or begged like a stereotypical, weak little under-clade. Instead she's filled with a righteous anger, and before she can stop herself she manifests her new fingers, five points of green hard-light, and slams them into the carnotite's arm with enough force to stop the arm from shattering her new form.

 

"I'm no runt, you brain-dead clod," she bites back as the carnotite splutters in rage,"I'm every bit as favoured as you are. And if you want to pass this test, you're going to have to be my brawn. So do us all a favour; shut up, and get in line. Otherwise the Noble Preceptor will be receiving reports of a carnotite who indefinitely hindered her plans. And she really won't like that." She flashes a cocky grin. "Will she?"

 

"You arrogant little piece of rubble, I'll-"

 

But the feldspars step between them, no longer amused by this conflict, expressionless masks somehow glowering at the two as destabilisers rendered in copper and powered by embedded criminals are summoned out of a shared vault belonging to the security wing of the machine-shop, the weapons crackling with lethal electricity. Both of the test partners swallow their insults and back away from the weapons.

 

" _Enough_ ," spits Oh-One, her mask a harlequin pattern of bronze and pig iron. "I have half a mind to fail you two immediately! What would the Preceptor say if she saw you two like this?"

 

"Not cool, gems," Oh-Three adds, "not cool at all. You better start the test, or we'll reverse the procedures."

 

She backs away to the right-hand door, goaded by the light of the destabilisers. The carnotite stares the feldspars down, before she moves to the left-hand door with a chuckle. An energy barrier springs up between the two gems; to cross it would destabilise their form immediately.

 

"Both of you are undergoing an aptitude test to see if you were worth upgrading. Both of your tests will be different, suited to events that fall within what you will come across in your lines of work. At some point, you will be forced to work together. This will show to us whether you are suited to work with the venerable agents of the Lattice. This is not a race, should one of you hit the co-operative section first, you will have to wait for the other."

 

"You better not slow me down, techer."

 

"Once the test is done," Oh-One continues as she ignores the threat, "you will meet us, and we will deliver the verdict on whether you have passed or not. Failure means temporary embedding while we wait for another applicant. Regardless of whether you pass or not, we hope you serve the Lattice admirably."

 

The feldspars move into the observation room. She steels herself, moving into a ready position as the carnotite does the same. The brute of a gem turns to face her.

 

"Don't leave me waiting, under-clade, or I'll make you regret it."

 

"I'm going to do just fine," she sasses back. "I just hope you don't get lost on the way. I'd hate to be left hanging because you forgot which way was forwards."

 

"Now I'm definitely going to make you regret it."

 

Her following insult dies on her lips when the barrier in front of her disappears, and she sprints forwards into the testing chamber.

 

* * *

 

 

She progresses through a series of brightly-lit corridors which shine a brilliant cadmium, the carnotite disappearing round a bend to the left. Eventually, she makes her way to her first challenge; a series of platforms intermingled with pits, at the bottom of which are great machines, the like of which are used to dispose of all forms of rubbish. The brass teeth at the bottom roll on each other, and she shudders; to fall down there is death. The final section of this particular test has no walls or ceiling either; all the areas surrounding the door at the end share the same machines as the pits.

 

"The first test," Oh-One states from a speaker system which she cannot see," is one of mobility. Using the various means we have installed in your cybernetics, cross the verge while avoiding the death traps."

 

She gulps as she scratches her head with a suspended digit, trying to figure out how she can complete the task. There's no way she can make the jump, but they must have installed some method of crossing the verge in front of her! She looks at the soles of her feet, her expression lighting up when she notices small raised areas on her heels. Grav-impellers!

 

She rests a foot on the wall, delighted when she finds that it sticks to the cadmium-bright surface. She attaches her other foot to the wall, and her personal centre of gravity shifts along with it. After a brief spell of dizziness, she walks across the wall to the final platform, marvelling at the genius of her cybernetics. Maybe having robot legs was pretty

 

However, all the grav-impellers in the world can't cut it when it comes to the machines in the walls. She doesn't dare put her foot down for fear of getting it trapped in the all-consuming device in front of her, and she steps from the wall onto the final platform, resting on the ground while she fights off a wave of impeller-related nausea.

 

She knows she should be able to cross this last bit. They wouldn't design a test that she couldn't complete! Right? She needed to think a little.

 

So if she used the grav-impellers to traverse surfaces, what did she use if she needed to go up into the sky, or across an ocean? Did her feet produce an even stronger impeller field? She mentally tries to push the grav-impellers to their limits, the devices whining as gravity is repelled around them, but it's no use. All she succeeds in doing is hovering her feet off the ground.

 

Evidently there was another augment then. But where and what could it be? As she thinks, she notices a list of available augments scrolling in the top-right corner of her visor, and it expands to cover the entire device when she focuses on it. _Decking rig, statis field projector, cyclotronic discharger, aerial reconfiguration-_

 

She smiles when she reads that last bit, and with a little bit of mental exercise she selects that modification. Her right arm raises itself up without any sort of prompt, the hard-light manipulators on the end forming a cross which slowly begins to spin. A rotor!

 

She yelps with surprise as she's lifted off the ground by her hand, making sure not to increase the speed to a point where she'll rise head-first to the crushers above. She leans forward and the arm moves with her, successfully propelling her across the crevasse. She deactivates the hover-hand with another thought, and her hard-light projections return to their normal shape as a high-pitched tone rings out across the chamber.

 

"Test one complete," Oh-One announces. "Please proceed into the next chamber."

 

She comes across a great door next, triple-locked brass and crystal protected by a shimmering destabiliser grid. There's no way she can open it physically.

 

"Your next test will assess your hacking and technology skills. Using your previous abilities as well as the hacking package we have installed, go through the door."

 

Now _this_ is more like it. She was created to interface with technology, and she can feel that the cybernetics have only upgraded her already significant computing skills. She selects the decking rig modification from the list in her top-right field of vision, and her hand turns into a holo-tablet, which brings up a visual representation of the local network that the door is using.

 

Huh. CohInOr encryption? T-cell antivirus software? _Firestorm barriers?_ If this had been something she had to crack before her upgrade, she would have needed hours or even some other members of her clade to get through this door. But the upgrades implanted in her gem show paths and methods she would have never guessed to use with her old gem, and before long the path to open the door is as clear as day.

 

She stages DDOS attacks on the network nodes controlling the destabiliser field, distracting the semi-sentient antivirus software long enough to send a hex-pick through the encryption, shattering it as it locates the user code and applies it to the CohInOr barrier. The firestorm barriers are tricky, and as she drowns the server in randomly generated messages of spam to slow down the encroaching T-cells she carefully navigates a corrosive paradox hidden within a PoiGift through the literal firewall and into the door's control node.

 

As she switches off her holo-tablet the field surrounding the door deactivates, the great barrier opening up to let her through. She allows herself a small grin as Oh-One announces her success.

 

The next chamber is a large, circular pit, which she drops down into. Her entrance closes above her while the intercom switches back on.

 

"This third test will assess your combat ability. Survive for five minutes, using any method at your disposal."

 

Oh dear.

 

As the intercom switches back off, bright flashes of ochre light all around the room blind her, holographic representations of nearly every clade and fusion ever catalogued pulling themselves out of the wall, emotionless as they pull out an armoury's worth of weapons from imaginary gems. She makes a choking noise as she desperately tries to find some sort of combat tool amongst her augments; her clade didn't have any gem-integrated weapons! Her panic only rises when a holo-pearl rushes towards her with a spear, and she raises her palm in a desperate attempt to halt the blade's descent.

 

A thin beam of green light shoots out from her palm, smothering the holograph in a projection, which futilely tries to move its sword arm as it hovers in place. She gives a surprised bark of laughter as she swings the immobilised holograph into the wall with enough force to shatter it. _The statis projector works!_

 

She stasifies another projection, an amethyst with a barbed whip, and throws it into two thick-set, bardiche carrying holographs who shatter like glass from the force of their comrade. Laughing, she immobilises some unknown hologram and punts it into a wall, before she sweeps her projector like a blade to catch the first member of a trio of holograms and send them all hurtling into a pile on the floor. Some stick-thin clade with a billhook attempts to cleave her cybernetic arm, and she manages to grasp the hologram's weapon by its handle, delivering a punch that travels straight through the combat program's head.

 

The move is impressive, but she knows that against real gems or orgs that blow wouldn't do anything more that annoy her opponent. The fact that the hologram's head reforms the moment she draws her hand away only reinforces this knowledge.

 

She resorts to picking it up with a blast of stasis, slamming into the ceiling hard enough for it to immediately dissipate. Yet she doesn't pay attention to a hologram who tackles her to the ground, pinning her stasis arm as it raises a needle-sharp stiletto above her throat. She goes cold with the worry that this might be it for her, but then she remembers another modification on the list; surely the cyclotronic discharger did something?

 

She selects it, wondering at the way her new fingers form a pyramid, one finger sticking out like the barrel of a las-serpenta, and she sighs with relief as a thin beam of greenish-white light bursts out and vaporizes her would be killer. Another bark from the weapon turns three more holograms to ash, the pulse of energy passing through them as easily as a blast of air.

 

The next hologram, a burly onyx with a great maul, easily deflects the cyclotronic blast with a swing of her weapon, and she is picked up in the hologram’s iron grip and slowly squeezed. Another quick blast from the discharger does nothing, and she desperately holds the mental trigger for the weapon down, trying to see how fast it shoots. To her surprise, there is no barrage of particle energy, but the minute ammunition within the discharger slowly begins to spool faster and faster, a small orb of energy appearing at the tip of her weapon. As the hologram’s half-intelligence recognises the threat, she releases the trigger, and the resulting blast of energy atomises the hologram and sends her flying back into the wall.

 

She tries to rise, dazed from the backblast, and finds herself facing the point of a sword wielded by a holographic beryl, which brings the sword back and thrusts it towards her throat-

 

And a buzzer rings across the arena. The holograms dissipate instantly.

 

“You have passed the third test. Please proceed to the co-operative chamber.”

 

* * *

 

 

When she arrives, she finds the carnotite waiting for her, leaning against a wall with her arms folded. The warrior-clade snorts when she spots her approaching through an open door.

 

“You took your sweet time, techer. What were you doing, whimpering about how fighting was supposed to be for gems like me?”

 

“Zip it, clod.”

 

The carnotite only laughs as she manifests her gamma-stave, the intercom switching on above them.

 

“This test will examine the co-operative potential of both of you. You must breach through this device” - a wall sliding open to reveal a computer - “copy the files onto yourself and then safely escape the test chamber. You must be prepared to defend yourself.”

 

Holograms fizzle into existence, a motley crew of worker and soldier-clades brandishing projected weapons. The carnotite barks out a satisfied grunt.

 

“Leave these half-things to me, techer. You get on with the files.”

 

She wirelessly connects to the computer in front of her, one of her hands transforming into a holo-tablet while the other moves to the interface connected to the computer. She can hear the carnotite laughing as she tears apart the holograms with her bare hands, and a slowly dissipating hologram slams into the wall right next to her.

 

After a brief analysis of the security protocols guarding the files, she’s thrilled to see that it’s not as difficult as the last hack. A simple content vector protocol patrolled by semi-sentient B-cell bots. Shouldn’t be too hard-

 

Hold on, _darklight protocols_? She curses under her breath. If she slips up here, she’s done for. She’s seen the effects of darklight protocols on one of her colleagues whose curiosity got the better of them, and she would rather die than be subjected to them.

 

She thinks that she might be able to handle it, and she cracks her knuckles before she starts to construct a cavity containing a corrosive paradox. She pings a decoy message down a firewire, distracting the B-cells long enough to attach her corrosive paradox to the AI controlling the darklight protocols. Now all she had to do was wait while the AI literally thought itself to death.

 

“Techer! You better tell me that the hack is going well!”

 

“2 minutes! You think you can hold against some holograms for that long, or do you need me to hold your hand?”

  
  
“I’m gonna smash you wh-”

 

Her threat is cut off as a maul slams into her breastplate, sending her crashing onto her back. As the holo-onyx raises its hard-light maul above its head, she sends a hyper-accelerated particle through the combat platform’s skull. The carnotite picks herself up, kicking the legs off a holographic pearl with a falchion as she does so. Within moments, her gamma-stave is back in her hand, and she swings it left and right like an agri-robonoid’s grain-blade on a satrapy-world.

 

“You had to use a ranged weapon,” the ungrateful soldier-clade hisses as she crumples a hologram with the tip of her quarterstaff. “Trust a techer to not have any honest weapons!”

 

“I just saved your manifestation! Where’s your gratitude?!”

 

“Gratitude’s for under-clades and weaklings! Just shut up and focus on hacking, and leave someone who’s built for combat to actually fight!”

 

And before she can demand an apology the carnotite tackles a massive hologram, pushing forwards into a mob of other smaller holograms as her stave swings to and fro. She turns back to the hack, confident that the holograms are distracted, and she’s pleasantly surprised to find that the AI has diverted all resources to solving the paradox, leaving the protocols deactivated. Creating a kill code, she drives it towards the AI, pushing it over the edge and shutting it down for good. After that, she rips apart the CVP as if it were nothing more than paper, exposing the files. She grins as she starts to download them, recognising their presence in her mind. It’s junk data; blank spaces and streams of nonsense binary. _It doesn’t matter_.

 

 She completes the download, turns around and is promptly stabbed through the shoulder by a hologram.

 

She gasps with pain, the hologram holding the blade staring unwaveringly as it fizzles out of existence along with the  mass of other holograms. It takes the blade with it, and she hisses as she sinks to her knees. Her visor is filled with flashing images; warning signs and status reports clog her vision like spam mail. The carnotite turns to her, stave in hand.

 

“Hah! Couldn’t handle a little scrap, under-clade?”

 

“Shut up,” she bites back. “Shut up shut up _shut up_.”

 

She thinks she’s grinning behind her lead visor. She can’t tell. The intercom switches on again.

 

“The final test will demonstrate to us your ruthlessness and tolerance for weakness. Using every means at your disposal, force your test partner to retreat to their gem.”

 

Her insides go cold, and the carnotite starts to bay like a mad dog, her stave manifested in her hand, the tips blazing with radioactive light.

 

“Finally! Come on, under-clade, let’s see if you’re metal inside as well as out!”

 

Before she can even scream, the carnotite is upon her, raising her staff high above her to cave in her projected head-

 

And she stays there, frozen by a beam of stasis energy. She laughs, and pushes her back into a wall with enough force to send spiderweb cracks across from the impact zone.

 

“I’m no pushover, you clod! Try and hit me!”

 

The carnotite grunts as she rises to her feet, charging forwards towards her. She leaves herself open to another beam of stasis, and cries in anger as she’s sent hurtling into the ceiling.

 

“Stop _doing_ that and just let me smash you!”

 

“I don’t think so, clod!”

 

She switches to her cyclotronic discharger and fires it, the accelerated particle smashing into the thick armour. It absorbs the energy without leaving so much as a scorch mark. The carnotite gurgles with laughter, even as another statis blast leaves her sprawled on the floor.

 

“Your toys won’t work on me! I can take this all day, under-clade!”

 

It’s true. She’d exhaust all the energy in her gem before the stasis would crack her power armour, and energy leech devices line the inside of that suit. Energy weapons have little bearing against her armour. She’d either have to get in close, which was suicide, or…

 

“Hey clod,” she yells as she freezes her in place, “why are you hiding behind your armour? I thought you were a real gem!”

 

“I’m more real than you’d ever be, techer! Just you wait-”

 

“Oh, I can wait all day. In fact, I think I can do this all year! Just imagine, being stuck in that armour in my field for a year! You and I could talk and talk…”

 

“No! I’m not going to stay trapped in this field! Get me out!”

 

The carnotite begins to thrash wildly within the field, and a warning sign appears on her visor, notifying her of the critical integrity of the field. She can’t keep this up for long.

 

“All that armour must be weighing you down, and that’s really good! I couldn’t control you if you let yourself out of that lead prison.” Her eyes widen and she slaps her hand to her mouth, miming horror at what she just said, and the carnotite takes the bait.

 

“So you think it’s a prison? Under-clade, for once in your short, pathetic life, you’re right! Let me show you my true form!”

 

Her power armour recedes across her head, exposing a face of absolute perfection, golden hair streaming down to her shoulders, the symbol of their master proudly displayed on her forehead, her gem taking a position of prominence on her chest. The armour folds in on itself as the room turns a poisonous yellow colour, her rad-counter pinging off the charts. Now or never.

 

She feigns sudden weakness, the stasis field surrounding the carnotite dissipating in a flash of freezing black unlight, and she grins.

 

“You idiot weakling. Come here,” she utters as she strides over to her and picks her up by the throat, hoisting her into the air. “The stave is too quick for you. Let me show you my glorious-”

 

“Wait,” she gasps out.

 

The carnotite laughs.

 

“Go on then, beg. It won’t change anything, but it’ll amuse me.”

 

“Please, just listen-”

 

“To what?”

She doesn’t say anything; she lets the whining roar of the cyclotron speak for her.

 

The hand around her throat slackens and drops, and she lands on her feet, backing away from the potent source of radiation. The carnotite gingerly raises her fingers to probe the hole that the weapon punched through her chest, just below her gem. The floor is littered with shining yellow fragments.

 

“Ah.”

 

And then the carnotite disappears in a flash of white light.

 

* * *

 

 

The feldspars come in after that, Oh-Three applauding her, a few of the unknown feldspars trading creds to a smug Oh-One. They clap her on the back and sing her praises and take her through a decontamination chamber, purging her of any errant particles that could have corrupted her, healing her wound without even needing a trip back to her gem to regenerate - she's assured that the augments will immediately rush back to their original places if she has to regenerate - standing motionless as they smarten her up, applying temporary makeup with their six hands to transform her, if only for a day; they plate her augments with swirling fractals of gold leaf and cover her green-hued skin in small chartreuse tiles. Her blonde hair is dyed amber and tied back, threaded with strands of brass. She catches herself in a nearby mirror and marvels at how different she looks.

 

They invite her to watch as they take the carnotite’s gem, embedding it into a destabiliser. That’ll teach her, they say, to lose to her. A hundred years as a weapon should hone her mind enough for the next test, they confirm as she grins like a canine.

 

She takes the elevator, looking every bit the personal assistant of a noble-clade Spire-lord. She is the motivation for the members of her clade to push themselves to the limit, that they might one day transcend their projected form and become a powerful, influential cyborg-savant. She watches the city go past as she rises, plotting; it will be hers. It will be her Preceptor’s.

 

The elevator reaches the top floor, somewhere that she has never been before, and the lift slides open with a chime. A pearl wearing the colours of the Lattice stands in front of her with her hands folded behind her back, two hulking carnotites flanking either side of her.

 

“So you’re the victor,” one of the carnotite booms. “That’s very well; we tolerate no weakness in our ranks.”

 

“Ma’am,” the pearl asks ( _Ma’am!_ ), “if you would please follow us to our Noble Preceptor. She wishes to talk with you.”

 

The penthouse where her Preceptor resides is rich with golds, brasses, bronzes and coppers, yellow crystal and inert diamond and a hundred other types of inert gems making up the walls of her palace at the top of the world. She has never seen such extravagance, not even in the Spire of Mirrors with its walls of mother-of-pearl and polished glass, and she’s breathless at the beauty of the palace.

 

They pass through a double door of varnished yellowwood, harvested from the satrapy-worlds of the orgs that have sworn themselves to DiamAuth, and enters a meeting room. A large table of polished brass sits in the middle, fractal patterns and yellow lacquer painting a hundred stories; the Lynch of the Hanged Queen, the Gala of Knives, the Hunt of the Bloody Moons. The motifs and characters swirl into each other, linking with one another as if they are part of the same story, which they are. The table tells the story of her Lattice’s rise to power. She finds herself running her hands over the various frescoes, murmuring to herself as she tries to remember every tale.

 

“That was a gift from an old friend of mine. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

 

She whirls around.

 

“M-my Preceptor! Forgive me, I was only-”

 

Yellow Diamond laughs, the jasper from earlier standing behind her with folded arms, a savage grin on her face.

 

“It’s quite alright. Rise,” her Preceptor commands as she steps up from her kneel. “You have proven yourself worthy in the challenges we have set you, and by the powers invested in me as the Preceptor of Society, Prosperity and Peace, I appoint you Arch-Lector of the Yellow Lattice.”

 

She remains impassive, bowing in gratitude, doing her best not to shriek with happiness.

 

“You will be responsible for the maintenance of the archives, extranet, servers and file security of the Yellow Lattice. You will find and punish any deckers who dare to pry open our secrets, be they of ganger or Lattice origin. You will be privy to all our technological developments and innovations, and you shall pioneer projects of your own. All these responsibilities and powers, I give unto you.”

 

“My Preceptor-”

 

“But first, you must do as my sisters and I have commanded. Go to Earth. Fix the Galaxy Warp. Activate the Cluster and in doing so end the Crystal Gems.”

 

A hand rests on her shoulder, a faint pressure keeping her down on her knees. She knows that Yellow Diamond could break her like a twig with a swipe of that hand. She wouldn't even need to connect the swipe.

 

“Keep my planet safe.”

 

The hand rises off her shoulder, and she stands to her feet. She feels clumsy in front of this elegant noble-clade, who offers her a confident smile.

 

“Now come with me.” It isn’t a request, and Peridot finds herself obeying her Preceptor without hesitation.

 

“I’ll follow you to the ends of the galaxy, my Preceptor. Where will we be going?”

 

Yellow Diamond flashes another confident, manipulative smile as a shuttle roars overhead, coming to land in a plaza of cream-yellow marble outside the penthouse.

 

“Why, where all the noble-clades go after a long day of work. The Spire of Light.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peridot’s swanning it up with the noble-clades! She must be proud to upgrade from a short space nerd to a robotic space nerd.
> 
> Uni’s coming. This fic might be able to squeeze out a few chapters before then.
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> Hover-cycles: Small, one-gem transports designed to go extremely fast.
> 
> Refacet-wafer: A small wafer of metal containing the complete information needed for a Facetter to do its job. Many different variations exist for many different types of gem.
> 
> Nano-lathes: Foundries filled with construction nano-robots. They can print out almost anything.
> 
> Plasma-culverins: Huge weapons that fire blasts of superheated plasma. Usually put on combat platforms and frigates.
> 
> Grav-impellers: Devices that reverse the gravitational pull of a certain area, allowing a vehicle to hover.
> 
> Holo-tablet: Roughly analogous to a human tablet computer.
> 
> 'Cut too deep': Gems can sometimes be mismanufactured in their Injector-pods, in which case defects can arise, such as a variety of mental illnesses or physical deformations. It's rare, but it happens, and those deformed indiviudals that emerge out of the pods are cast down into the lowest rungs of Gem society, to mingle with crackedheads and anticitizens.
> 
> Leisure-shows: A wide variety of shows designed to make gems relax. Full of propaganda for their sponsoring Lattices.
> 
> Facetter: A robotic device that can change the physical manifestation of a gem. It's a painful process, and not many make it.
> 
> Crystal-gun: A device that spews hot crystal. Used as impromptu gem repair material or as a weapon by the particularly twisted.
> 
> Techer: Derogatory term for a gem with cybernetic implants.
> 
> Agri-robonoid: Robonoid created to harvest grain, for the production of foodstuffs.
> 
> Satrapy-world: Many alien civilisations owe fealty to DiamAuth, having been conquered and subjugated into pseudo-slavery long ago. They're allowed to do their own thing as long as it doesn't go against DiamAuth's interest, that they send their soldiers to fight for DiamAuth, that they teach their kids to obey DiamAuth, that DiamAuth maintains a presence on their worlds, that parts of their worlds host Kindergartens, and so on. Those planets that refused are no longer capable of hosting life. People say they'd rather die on their feet, but when the slavers come knocking they get on their knees soon enough.
> 
> Arch-Lector: The title of a gem responsible for the maintenance of a Lattice's records and virtual security. It's high enough to guarantee a place in the Lattice's highest echleons.


	4. The Exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want from me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my absolute favourite chapter to write. I really enjoyed writing everything in this chapter; White Diamond is probably my favourite OC.
> 
> Special thanks to ProudAmerikan for helping me write the later scenes! Really appreciate the help, man.
> 
> Enhance your reading with these specifically selected cyberpunk tracks!
> 
> The Spire of Mirrors (White Diamond) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAqA-ky2K0
> 
> The Ire of Mirrors (The Call): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBXiSU6fb7Y
> 
> The Wrath of Mirrors (The Chase): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ypg5WVCxbg
> 
> The Wrath of Ice (Aid Unlooked For): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSg06AOctaE
> 
> The Spire of Ice (Blue Diamond): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZkwCfkCf-8

She watches them go; her former benefactor and the yellow one, who embrace White Diamond like mortal enemies forced together after some horrific mutual disaster before they take their leave. Their guards and the two other gems that accompanied Yellow Diamond trail after them like the companion creatures the orgs call ‘pets’. An ironic comparison, really, considering the situation she’s just got into.

 

White Diamond smirks as a pearl closes the door behind her departing guests before she returns to her position by the left side of the great silverwood portal.

 

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, as I always say,” she utters daintily as she turns to her, offering her a hand which she takes absent-mindedly. “Come, dear, let’s go somewhere a little less, ah, imposing.”

 

Her pearl opens another silverwood door, which leads into a small lounge area. Two ornate sofas constructed out of white cloth and white-lacquered wood dominate the room, studded with perfectly cut pearls. Silver tables covered in dainty cloth the colour of snow rest on either side of the sofas, supporting miniature sculptures and trees from the hyper-grav worlds of the cimari, carefully tended to by the minute arthropods who despite their size had managed to win two wars with DiamAuth. Podiums line the walls, each one supporting a robonoid-statue shaped like an anatomical study. They cycle through a variety of heroic poses; as one starts to flex, another poses with her hands on her hip like some protagonist out of a joy-pict. They have no feet.

 

One of the walls is transparent crystal, and it gives them an unrestricted view of Aggregate One with its high rises and org-parks and carefully hidden slums, the servant quarters, buried like eggs in the great nests of metal that surround them. She stares at the view with a mixture of wonder and fear, her face pressed against the glass. It’s completely different to how she remembers her home. It’s like she left one alien world and landed straight on another. The Preceptor laughs at her awe.

 

“That view never does get old,” she admits as she slides down onto one of her pristine sofas, a pearl placing a crystal jug of water flavoured with vivid blue vago fruits from the Oomoti Reach on a glass table in front of her. “Come, dear. Have a seat. Pearl Oh-One? Retrieve us some food from the kitchens.”

 

“Yes, my Preceptor.”

 

The pearl leaves them as White Diamond pours two glasses of the flavoured water, setting one down in front of her as she reclines into her sofa, an arm reaching out across the top of the plush sofa.

 

“I do insist you drink, dear. You’ve been hostage for thousands of years; surely you’re craving the taste of something.”

 

She feels out of place and awkward, sitting next to a Preceptor (a Preceptor!) while she cradles a glass of water, enjoying the organic, cool feeling of liquid rushing through her teeth and down her throat. She tries to meet White Diamond’s gaze who smiles sympathetically as she sips the water. _What did she want?_

 

“I’m sure you must feel confused and lost. Don’t worry,” she assures her as she raises a hand to the room, “from now on, the Spire of Mirrors considers you a friend. We’ll keep you safe and sound. I just need a teeny, tiny little favour from you in return.”

 

And there it was. She sees no point in skirting around the topic they’re avoiding.

 

“What do you want from me?”

 

“Well, to begin with-”

 

She’s interrupted as the pearl comes in again, bearing a silver platter groaning with food. There’s split pese paste served hot with sliced onans and crispy grainbar, a pool of golden-yellow alaf oil brimming in the middle of it; soft cheeses from a selection of animals such as erebu, qopas and mimmanow, red copes fresh on their branches resting side by side with it; small baked cakes of brown koloatl and deep red sher topped with sacca; hot mugs of schalep, the thick sweet drinks made with flowers harvested from the mountains of Canna; and in the middle an acolo stuffed with lasn, fresh off the spits. White Diamond tears a leg off the acolo and offers it to her.

 

“It’s awfully good,” the Preceptor insists as she recoils from the once-sapient meat. “The acolo had no use for any real slave roles when we conquered them, what with them being little more than animals, but they’re extremely nutritious for orgs. Delicious, too!”

 

“N-no thanks. I couldn’t really stand meat myself, the acolo’s yours. Apologies.” The noble-clade smirks.

 

“That’s alright, my dear, I understand that food isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.” She rubs the leg in the pese as she turns to her servant. “We’ll call you back if we need you, Pearl Oh-One. Now as I was saying beforehand,” she continues as the pearl leaves the room, “I need a favour from you. And that favour is small, really, nothing compared to what I’m prepared to do for you.”

 

She pauses as she tears a chunk of acolo meat off the bone, and that’s when she notices that the Preceptor only has canines for teeth. Her mouth is made of razors.

 

“All I want you to do is tell me everything you know about the Spire of Ice.”

 

Her former master’s home. This didn’t bode well. Info of this sort only meant one thing.

 

“I’ve done my research. I know you served my...comrade...before the Quartz Schisms, and I know that you were high up enough to be a performing artist for her inner circle. I know Blue Diamond very well, she barely changes anything in that dreadfully barren icicle of hers. Odds are, she hasn’t altered her Spire since you went to war in her name. So please,” she requests as she places the leg bone in between her teeth, crushing it to bits between her knife-sharp teeth, savouring the flavour of the powdery brown marrow within, “do be a good gem and tell me everything you know.”

 

“I-I don’t know...If she hears about this, I-”

 

“You want to know what’s in it for you, then?” She gives a deep chuckle. “Why, that’s reasonable, perfectly reasonable. Well, I’d let you swear yourself to me, firstly. There’s no greater honour in life than serving me, dear. Far better than serving Blue Diamond, that ghastly barbarian. You’d be protected from any hit-teams she’d send after you as well. I know you’re scared about this new homeworld, too. Five thousand years of progress must seem scary if you haven’t been around to see it develop. So I’m prepared to give you accommodation on one of my satrapy-worlds. The sunset’s a different colour than what Silica used to have, on account of there being no atmosphere, but rest assured, you’ll soon be feeling right at home.”

 

“...”

 

“Is that not enough? I can promise riches, and even political acumen if you want. Can’t you see I’m being generous here?”

 

In truth she was too generous. She was expecting to return back to a homeworld that hadn’t been choked underneath the steel weight of the megalopolis that dominated the entire world now. She had hoped to return to a world where she could visit the old deserts with sand as black as night and mountains of pure basalt under a great white sky that turned to a brilliant blue when the sun went down; where she could leave her little house in the middle of the countryside and hike to a place she knew where there was a lake that she could manipulate to form whatever she wanted and let her mind walk free without a care or a burden placed on her by Blue Diamond save when she tested new water-dances to amuse her patron’s court, or maneuvers for the water-puppets that formed her backing group.

 

She never intended them to be used as conscripts. She never wanted to be sent to that garden-world to fight the rebels and their allies in Ur and Akkad, in Shanxi and in Caral, Knossos and Thinis, and drown them under the weight of their own planet. She never wanted to imagine that her world had changed while she was trapped in that abominable device.

 

That lake’s gone now, replaced with an edifice to empire. As is her home; buried under the weight of the over-city. Nothing can replace that. Not even some highly-guarded compound on  a dead world. Home is where the heart is, and her home shattered long ago.

 

That’s when she realises that she made a fatal error coming back to this once-homeworld, this cybernetic maze of politics and crime. She should have stayed with Steven on Earth, never mind the Crystal Gems.

 

She needs to tell them. She couldn’t care less if they imprisoned her; she needs to warn them of the storm coming their way. She feels for the contact device hidden in her dress that the AtmosCom officer gave her as part of some ‘veteran’s initiative’ and she moves to stand up.

 

“Please excuse me, Preceptor. I need - I need some time to think about this.”

 

A flash of irritation crosses her face, which is replaced moments later by one of calm acceptance.

 

“Of course, my dear, perfectly understandable; I’m demanding something big of you, after all. There’s a small guest’s bedroom nearby here. Perhaps you can mull over your decision in there while I wait for you here. I’ll give you twenty minutes, dear, to weigh up both sides of the argument,” she adds as the pearl enters the room again, bowing to her as she indicates the way to the bedroom. “I pray you will make the right choice.”

 

* * *

 

 

The bedroom is every bit as white as the last room and half as grand; a silver bed frame with a plump white mattress dominates the centre of the room, steel tables polished to a mirror sheen on either side of the bed, a crystal chandelier above providing a cream light that somehow softens the harsh white of the walls. The ceiling is constructed of small hexagonal cells that flow like the sea. A window gives her an unrestricted view of the massive construct in front of her; DiamAuth Parliament, so high it stretches into the night above, a monolith of turquoise-green, the colours of democracy and safety. It overlooks the spires surrounding it, to remind the Lattices of their place.

 

“I trust that madam will think over her choices and consider my noble Preceptor’s wishes in her decision,” the pearl intones. “I will return in twenty minutes.”

 

The servant-clade closes the door softly and she presses her ear to the whitewood, checking that she’s marched back to her place by White Diamond’s side before she takes out her communicator from underneath her dress. It’s high-tech, complicated enough that she would have been clueless how to use it had the officer not taught her. She presses a button and a holographic projection blinks into existence in front of her, input bars flashing on the communicator in her hands, asking for universal coordinates, galactic size and supercluster information which she puts in deftly, hands running over the device as if she’d known how to use it all her life.

 

Once she’s sure that she’s got the right coordinates and multispectral frequencies, she starts to talk.

 

“Steven, I hope you’re able to hear this. There’s a gem that’s looking for you; she even knew your names! I don’t know how, I-I didn’t tell her,” she lies, “I swear! She’s on her way to Earth, and she’s not alone!”

 

She looks out at the vast city in front of her, and the imposing structure of an empire’s government, and she sighs.

 

“Steven...the homeworld...it’s not the way it used to be. Everything here is so advanced; I can’t even understand it! There’s no way _anything_ on Earth can stand up to it! Please,” she begs as her voice cracks, “don’t put up a fight! It’ll only lead to devastation!”

 

She switches off the recorder and sends the message immediately, safe in the knowledge that an uninterrupted data stream was hurtling towards Earth at FTL speed, arriving within the year. Hopefully, she managed to catch whatever frequencies the humans used in their now-advanced technology, and send a message to them. To Steven.

 

She hides the communicator in her dress as the pearl slams the door open, standing to rigid attention beside it.

 

“My Preceptor has requested your presence. Please follow me.”

 

“It hasn’t been-”

 

“It wouldn’t be wise to displease my Preceptor. Follow me.”

 

So she comes back into the lounge room, White Diamond flashing a shark-like grin towards her, a mug of schalep in hand. She indicates her to sit down on the sofa opposite her.

 

“Well? Have you had time to think it over?”

 

“...Yes.”

 

“And? Have you made the right choice?”

 

“I have.” She takes to one knee, bowing her head respectfully towards White Diamond. “I swear myself to you, my noble Preceptor, and I shall tell you all you wish to know about the Spire of Ice, my no-”

 

But the Preceptor in front of her starts to cackle hysterically, putting down the mother-of-pearl mug gently onto the crystal table that divides them as she slaps her knee and hoots with amusement at some joke only she understands.

 

“Of course you would! I knew you would make the right choice. Only...you don’t really mean it, do you.”

 

Her insides go cold.

 

“M-my Preceptor?”

 

“Please, drop the prefix! It’s the height of rudeness to claim that someone is your master. After all, you already have another one.”

 

“I-”

 

“How much did the rebels promise you? Gold? An ocean? That mudball’s entire water supply? To let you rule Silica once they had reduced it to ash?” She’s not smiling anymore; it’s no longer a game to her. White Diamond - no longer the laughing, confident  maternal friend she pretended to be but a cold, efficient ruler who’s had her position secure for aeons -  steeples her hands and analyses her like an insect pressed between two glass slides under a microscope, and she breaks.

 

“Please, Preceptor,” she stammers out, pushing herself back into the sofa, “you don’t - you don’t understand! I hate the Crystal Gems, really, I do, but-”

 

“But what? You think me so behind the times that I can’t monitor every single communication in my own _home_? Please, _dear_ , I’m not your former master, I keep track of everything that goes on in my Spire. I can recognise the coordinates for Earth as well. I fought there as much as Yellow and Blue did.” Her glare softens as her eyes glaze over, remembering.

 

“I was there you know, at Atlantis, when the human screamers came rushing out of the depths and butchered my finest gems like cattle. When they strung up my heir like a puppet on a lonely string at the top of Mount Sagarmāthā, after that crushing defeat in the valley below by Rose and her alien allies. When we lost entire battalions of warrior-clades to _hunter-gatherers with sticks_ on the Red Sister! You, you were there! You saw their barbary, you were there with Blue Diamond at the Fields of Sorrow when the Flower Knight killed the entire line of the Spire of Emeralds! How could you go over to them? _What did they promise you_?!”

 

White Diamond towers over her as she clasps her hands around her neck, and she starts to choke as she’s lifted into the air by the deceptively strong Preceptor, legs kicking weakly as her vision begins to blacken. She fears for her life; she’s about to wheeze her innocence  when White Diamond suddenly calms down. Her hands go limp and she falls to the ground with a thud, coughing and gasping as air rushes into lungs that don’t need it.

 

“I agree that this expedition to Earth is a fool’s errand,” the Preceptor mutters bitterly. “They haven’t done anything for millennia. We’re doing nothing more than provoking a cimari’s nest, so to speak, and if humanity was able to defeat us with spears and leather armour then I fear for us all if we provoke them after they’ve had five thousand years in peace to advance. Fission missiles won’t do much to our ships, but to our planet…”  
  
The Perceptor sighs.

 

“You were right in agreeing that we shouldn’t be going to Earth.”

  
  
She struggles to her feet, using the nearby table as support, standing tall and looking White Diamond in the eyes.

 

“Then why did you decide to choke me in the first place?!”

 

“Just because I think that Earth should be left alone does not mean I’ll let your behaviour slide! You’ve been communicating with the same enemy that killed my daughter, my dear, sweet Kimberlite! How else was I supposed to react?! By the Authority, are all of Blue Diamond’s gems so _dense_?!”

 

“Daughter?”

 

She’s picked up by the throat and thrown into a wall, colliding so hard that it leaves spider-web cracks across the polished steel.  


“She was my heir! My child,” the diamond rants as the robonoid-statues stop posing, “my darling gem! I had such grand plans for her, and she was taken from me in the great deltas of River Two Five by Gemtaker and that monkey king Djer! She was _everything_ to me! And you dare, you _dare_ support them?! Oh, I take back everything I said earlier, you should have never agreed to stay here! Hematites, apprehend her! Take her to the oubliettes!”  


And at that word the robonoid-statues - the hematites - stand upright, pulling halberds out of their forehead mounted gems that could easily be mistaken for metal as they step off their podiums and circle her, gravitonic dischargers mounted at the tip glimmering with harsh white light, wings of energy - which she recognises as artfully constructed grav-chutes - flaring out from the nubs on their backs. She raises her hands above her head in surrender as White Diamond moves behind her guards.

 

“Destabilise her, and quickly! She’s dangerous!”

 

She yells in horror as their leader, identified by a half-halo of spiked white silver that’s manifested above her head, grasps her wrist and sings an order at her, to _get on your knees and await judgement_. But instead of obeying it she fills with a sudden, simmering anger, and she wrenches her hand out of the hematite’s shimmering mirror-clad grip. The vago-infused water flies out of the jug and hardens into a razor of ice at the last moment, and the guard next to her cries out as her immobile face crumples inwards from the dolorous blow of the manipulated water. As her form disintegrates into smoke she steps back, the water swirling around her like a gale of wind.

 

“No, get away, _get away_ ,” she screams as two of the hematites start forwards, gravitonic dischargers mounted on the tops of the halberds shining bright as they point towards her, “get away from me or I’ll kill all of you! I’ve... _had it_ with politics and, and DiamAuth, and this war over that water-logged dirtball, and this, this metal - _sickness_ \- that’s taken my home! And now you want me to rot inside another object, after I spent _millennia_ in that mirror! No. No more! I’ve been a prisoner for four thousand years! _You’re not keeping me any longer_!”

 

The water solidifies into a broad scythe of razor sharp ice that sweeps across the hematites, scoring their armour and sending them recoiling away from the lethal weapon. She turns away from them in a panic and rushes towards the window.

 

“No,” screams White Diamond as her hematites pick themselves up and charge after her. “You’ll depressurize the room! You’ll ruin all my furniture! _Shoot her_!

 

The ice slams through the glass with enough force to punch a hole straight through, the shockwave shattering the rest of the pane as the half-vacuum outside rushes in, the howling wind buffeting White Diamond and the hematites as they stare down at her falling figure.

 

* * *

 

She laughs with delight as she freefalls down the side of the Spire of Mirrors, punching through clouds of water vapour that quickly dissipate as she absorbs their moisture to make a pair of globular water wings, snapping them open to slow her descent. The jolt that runs through her body afterwards sends a shiver of pleasure down her back. She’s free!

 

Then the hematites jump out of the hole as they activate their grav-chutes, needle-thin feathers of white gravitonic energy forming great bird’s wings on their backs which they fold in to catch up with her.

 

She does the same, deliberately altering her course into a designated traffic zone, and with the mass of water she’s stolen from the clouds she forms a protective ball of thick ice around her. It shields her from the rushing shuttles and transport barges that zoom all around. One or two unlucky pilots collide with her, the fireballs and metal debris turning the aerial motorway into a charnel house and a large enough screen for her to fall through unmolested. The hematites circle above with no way to progress down into the city below.

 

The ice bubble melts around her, forming back into a pair of folded wings as she hurtles towards a space in between the high-rise towers and Spires of lesser Lattices, a depression in the map of Silica caused by it being left as it was while buildings around it stole its light and air. She zooms towards it, opening her wings at the last possible moment to slam into the tiled, turquoise ground.

 

Her impact startles the aliens and their gem masters that had been congregating there, a menagerie ranging from the repulsive forms of kakopahn workers to the great hulks of the bohema to spindly zolq technophiles. There’s even one or two humans, captives abducted in their sleep during that period of mild interference in the years the humans called the seventies. All are bound in chains of crackling light suspended in beams of stasis energy that hang from a fungus-shaped construct of green crystal, which is situated along with other similar constructs in front of a vast water fountain of gold which trickles like a waterfall and illuminates the construct which slowly revolves, as if it’s displaying the orgs like a -

 

 _This is a slave market_ , she realises with disgust as the slaver, a cruel looking ametrine with a great barbed scourge of a weapon, yells for her to leave. Two onyxs with mauls move forwards, shooing her away with their hands as the crowd of buyers looks on anxiously, and the slaves desperately. She’s never seen anything quite so revolting, and once again she realises that Silica is now so different as to be an alien world of itself.

 

Without hesitation she bends her water wings into a grasping tentacle which picks up one of the onyxs and throws her into a nearby office building, sending the slaver and her audience screaming for cover. The other onyx growls as she hoists her maul, leaving herself wide open for a blow that splits her open like ripe fruit.

 

The black gems clatter to the floor as she races to the construct, cutting down the org slaves who whisper praises and thanks in unutterable languages or clouds of pheromones as they rush off into the depths of the city. They manage to escape before the first hematite lands with a ground-shattering impact, cracking the gilded tiles under her feet, her wings raised above her masked head, the half-halo balancing perfectly above her face. She rises to the tiny nubs she uses for feet as the other hematites - nearly two whole squads- land around her in a semi-circle pattern, their grav-chutes deactivating as they pull grav-halberds out of their heads, pointing the tips at her, the dischargers on the ends glowering with energy.

 

“Anticitizen Four-Five-Nine-Dash-Three-Three-Four-One,” the haloed hematite narrates in a silky sing-song lilt, “surrender yourself! You are surrounded, under-clade, and you cannot hope to beat twenty of us. All the water in the world will not save you.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she spits back, as the water behind her starts to shimmer, another tentacle coating her and hardening into icy armour. “I’m done running!”

  
  
“Well then,” the hematite laughs as her halberd begins to glow white-hot with gravity-splitting energy, “I’m glad we’re on the right state of mind here. I’m going to-”

  
The water bulges in twenty different places at once, and twenty copies of the hematites in front of her step out of the water, three-dimensional reflections of the mirror-sheen gems, accurate down to their razor-sharp halberds.

 

“-fall back! Hit the air and blast them!”

 

Some of the hematites manage to take off in time, and they’re followed by their water-clones who flap wings of ice and tackle them out of the air, twirling like dancers as they abandon their weapons and grapple with each other like falling angels. The rest hesitate and find themselves on the defensive from the aggressive clones or else ignore her order and charge their watery counterparts, slamming grav-halberd against copies rendered in ice.

 

The hematite commander doesn’t struggle with her clone; where the other hematites charge their counterparts with halberds raised and curses on their lips she adopts a kneeling position, taking careful aim and clipping the watery wing of her double with a blast of white light. Moments later, the gravitonic field surrounding the point of light (in actuality a miniaturised black hole) annihilates the clone, as enough mass is sucked into the hole for it to lose its form. The tiny singularity dissipates with a howling shockwave as the water sloshes onto the floor. The hematite commander doesn’t react at all; instead, she switches targets.

 

She manages to dodge to the side of one blast that takes a chunk of the slaver’s stall with it, bending the near-endless supply of water behind her into a wave that she sends crashing down towards the hematite who activates her grav-chute and flies away from the danger. She lands behind her, her halberd slamming into the space that she occupied moments before. For a moment, the strange sensation of gravity reversing overpowers her sense of balance and she stumbles straight into a double handed swing that originates from below knee height and bites into her armoured abdomen, the ice preventing the blade from cutting into her manifestation and knocking the air out of her. As she reforms the armour around the weapon, it glows white-hot.

 

The resulting gravitonic detonation sends her flying into the fountain, slamming into it with a wet thud. She slowly picks herself up, the water from the fountain flowing around her and knitting any fractures in the ice suit. The hematite commander laughs as she holds her weapon by the hilt right below the blade, her other hand raised politely to cover her immobile silver mask of a mouth.

 

“Give up, under-clade,” she titters as she shifts into a combat stance, steadily lowering the grip on her halberd in order to balance the centre of gravity so that she can raise it like an electro-fusil, the tip whirring with gravitonic energy. “At the end of the aeon, you’re just a water-dancer. I’ve seen things that make you look like an insect!”

 

She freezes at the words, and the area around her – in her own mind – seems to do so as well. It is curious, she thinks, how the hematite's words can sound so loud in so open a space. They seem to bounce off the surrounding office blocks and through the air, reverberating and cascading to a point where the remaining hematites could have been singing the same warning. The same insult, the demand to surrender.

 

She doesn’t move in response the mocking echo, not even a flinch, but she becomes intently aware of her position. The position of the hematites, seventeen now, as they dance with their drowning clones, blade against watery blade, masks against their shimmering reflections. The great fountain made out of a moon’s worth of gold fifty meters behind her, the water within whispering and writhing inside her head like some serpent, begging to be let free, the mental voices given to the element by the programming in her gem all but compelling her to act.

 

The being itself, standing in the shadow of the slaver’s podium. Curvy, but slight, legs tapering away into nothingness as spiked circles of silver float around her limbs like moons, a half-halo of silver wavering above her death-mask, giving her the countenance of an angel, her grav-chute folded neatly behind her back, ready to flare out of the path of danger in a moment. She’s built the same as the grav-halberd in her hands, which flickered with the bright energy of captive gravitons. One dolorous blow would send both ends of her gem rocketing in opposite directions, and even when not active it was still a lethal weapon. She has no doubt about her opponent’s skill with it.

 

The hematite would not let her go unwounded. The halberd was polished, sharpened, shining like a dead star. Surrender was not an option. All the water-clones in the world couldn’t save her from the soldier in front of her.

 

But that didn’t mean she was out of options.

 

She turns her head to the fountain, and the hematite springs forward, sensing weakness, the warrior-clade bringing her grav-halberd back before she thrusts it low, the crackling discharger leveled straight at her torso. For a moment she debates whether to duck right or left, before realizing it wouldn't matter: the weapon would swing to match her path and the hematite is built for speed in all things, both movement and combat. Any attempt to move sideways would result in a clean bisection, and another thousand year stint in some gem’s personal mirror.

 

Instead, she jumps over the blade, her wings snapping out to propel her up into the air and out of harm’s reach. The hematite delays long enough for her to pull a thin whip of water out of the vast fountain behind her and send it rushing towards the gem, who disperses the attack with a swing of her grav-halberd and opens her wings, soaring up underneath her with the tip of the weapon pointed towards her.

 

A grasping, watery pseudopod wraps itself around the hematite’s leg and throws her to the ground before she can retaliate, the impact gouging a small crater into the turquoise tiles, but the warrior-clade regains her senses in time for her to roll out of the way of a spear of ice that would have shattered her.

 

The hematite brings her halberd up to block another blow before she fires a bolt of gravitonic energy towards her, who is forced to ground in order to defend herself properly from the attack, wings flowing around her into a shield of ice that absorbs the impact of the halberd’s blade. The hematite tries to wrench out the weapon to no avail, and a sudden push from the other side of the shield sends her careening into the fountain.

 

She grins as she spots the impact crater, but her expression falls when the hematite commander climbs out of the gem-shaped hole, seemingly unhurt. She responds by pulling out great whips of water connected to the fountain, which slither around the lithe gem like snakes.

 

However, her opponent doesn’t summon her halberd immediately but places a finger to her ear. What she’s doing becomes immediately apparent as the fountain that looms above her starts to gurgle, and the water whips begin to disperse.

 

“Now that’s enough,” the hematite chirps as the fountain runs dry. “I thought you would have been easy; I won’t underestimate you again.”

 

Snarling, she summons the water that lies in pools around her and forms another whip that swirls around her, ready to be launched at the hematite commander in front of her. Yet the high-pitched whine of fourteen dischargers signals to her that the fight is over. The fountain drew away any autonomous capability the water-golems had and they lie in pools of water, unresponsive to her commands. The hematite commander laughs at her efforts.

 

“Such tenacity is admirable in a gem,” the warrior-clade admits as she picks her up by her hair. “But it is also tiresome. I bore of such games.”

 

She’s thrown onto the tiled floor, crying out as cold metallic hands grasp her gem between two impossibly powerful digits and begin to squeeze. Pain explodes all across her body, a deep agony that sends her screaming. Her form shudders momentarily as instinct attempts to get her to retreat to her gem, to begin the healing process.

 

“Now,” the hematite commander begins as she tightens the grip on her gem. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”

 

A las-blast arcs out of the air and through the hematite’s face. Her form disintegrates before she can even scream, her unscathed mirror-shine gem clattering to the floor.

 

Three ice-blue shuttles bearing the sigil of the Blue Lattice descend over the fountain on howling thrusters, veiled azurites leaning out of the open doors as they grasp las-serpentas with their free hands, firing bolts of shrieking blue light that melt whatever they touch. Some of them jump out of the shuttles with their bare fists raised, unleashing a flurry of non-lethal attacks on the hematites. They have no room to swing their halberds and are soon incapacitated; alive, if ashamed.

 

As the hematites are distracted a shuttle lands in front of her, the doors sliding open to reveal two azurites who can be told apart only by the different patterns of the spinels that are stitched into their veils. One of them reaches out a hand, desperately motioning for her to come aboard.

 

Despite their background, she doesn’t hesitate; she clambers on board and rests on the cold steel floor of the shuttle as it takes off, one of the azurites taking pot-shots with her las-serpenta as she does so.

 

She whispers praises to her saviours as she curls up on the floor, but all that earns her is silent, mocking laughter from her rescuers. In the distance, she notices a cobalt-blue spire getting closer and closer, and - too late - she realises what a horrendous mistake she’s made.

 

* * *

 

The shuttle lands on a platform of frozen water and blue crystal and she yells, more out of pain than defiance, as she’s abruptly pushed out by the silent azurites. They make no noise, but their body language speaks for themselves; she’s to remain submissive and silent, and maybe if she’s lucky she won’t be crushed on the spot.

 

A maze of veiled corridors later, they arrive at Blue Diamond’s throne room. It is a mass of blue metal, interspersed with ice; sculptures of nitrogen and hydrogen spiral upwards like chains of org DNA, terminating at the roof where pillars of solid neon hang, filled with light by unknown sciences. Curtains of all kinds of fabric line the walls and hung from the ceiling, fluttering in some hidden draught that sent them dancing. The throne, to her surprise, remains as it was; a creation of cold metal and colder ice, curtains of soft blue cloth hiding the silhouette of her master.

 

She hunches over her throne, her entire body hidden under a series of veils and robes, yet she no longer wears her hood. She’s wearing all sorts of blue jewellery; gems that betrayed her line a necklace of frozen helium that she wears around her neck; a fate worse than the mirror. Her pearl - a piteous, silent thing - crouches at her feet, looking at the ground

 

The azurites throw her to her knees before they bow to their Preceptor, crawling onto their stomachs and lying with their faces pressed to the floor. She doesn’t pick herself up; she remembers well the impatience and cold fury that her old master had for any sort of defiance.

 

“Your conflict with my...compatriot cost over thirty innocent gems their lives,” she spits at her broken form with contempt. “As the Preceptor of Creation, that means I have to write to near over twenty minor Lattices, DiamAuth, the Office of Dissipation as well as any loved ones or friends they might have had. White Diamond never did care for collateral, and I am saddened to see that apparently, neither do you.”

 

She stands from her throne, the veils retracting to reveal her face. The hollow, empty pits that could be called eyes from a distance are now exposed to the air, yet she has no problems in navigating her way down from her spider-throne. She’s a giant, looming over her with all the unstoppable power of a tsunami, hanging over a small village.

 

“However, I do. Innocent life is priceless to me, as I’m sure you remember; those endless balls and galas weren’t just for show, you know.”

 

Her freezing hands grip her head and pushes it back, forcing her to look at the glowering Preceptor. Her furious expression is completely at odds with her ice-cold voice

“The only reason that I haven’t struck you down yet is because you still have important information on you. And once we get what we need, well…I’m sure I don’t need to say. I think the public will enjoy seeing the public corruption of a mass murderer and orgsop.”

 

“You already have everything you want,” she mumbles in response. “so go on. Do it. I don’t care anymore.”

 

“We’re not done with you just yet.”

 

Blue Diamond walks around her to a table, a large holo-projector surrounded by a thick rim of sculpted ice. She turns her head to follow, but an azurite yanks her hair and pushes her face into the freezing cobalt floor.

 

The Preceptor fiddles around with the control panel of the table and a holographic display of a planet comes up. It’s Earth.

 

“See, we know that what’s left of the Crystal Gems is hiding on Earth. The problem is we don’t know where exactly, and it’s impossible to attempt a covert search without some sort of insider information on a garden-world this densely populated. Now, we could get you to point it out for us on the map and then dispose of you, but seeing as we wouldn’t know if you were lying or not...I’m sure you understand that’s not really an option for us. That’s why you’re going with them; to lead our agents right to their doorstep.”

 

A gesture, and she’s let go. She rubs her hair as she slowly rises to her feet, making sure to look anywhere but directly at the Preceptor in front of her.

 

“And what makes you think that I won’t lead them into a trap?”

 

“Well, considering that we’d just blast the planet with gamma waves if you do, you don’t have a choice if you want your monkey friends to come out of this situation alive.”

 

“W-what makes you think I care about some orgs on a backwater world in the middle of nowhere?”  


“We caught you sending a message to them! How idiotic do you think we are?" She huffs. "DiamAuth and White Diamond wants you dead immediately for that little stunt you pulled earlier. DiamAuth are figureheads, but White Diamond always gets her way _unless_ a different Preceptor happens to stand in her way. Do you understand?”

 

Another world flashes up on the screen. A tiny, backwater world with basalt mountains, orange sand and water; lots of it. A pang of homesickness flashes in her guts.

 

“This is Lustre-Nine-Omegon. A frontier world, populated by small teams of scientists researching who knows what. Looks like how the homeworld used to look, doesn’t it? I know that ever since you got back to Silica you’ve thought that it looks nothing like how it used to. This planet will serve as adequate compensation for what Silica apparently lacks. Lead us to the Crystal Gems, and I’ll ensure that DiamAuth never lays their hands on you. You can live the rest of your life in exiled peace.”

 

It’s a very, very tempting offer. One she had no choice but to accept. The alternative was unthinkable.

 

“Why the sudden change in tone, Preceptor? One minute you want to crush me, the next you’re offering me an escape route. Why?”

 

The Preceptor's lips tighten in the facsimile of a smile. It is not out of amusement or sincerity.

 

“I despise those who kill the innocent and pure, but I despise White Diamond more. Why should you be concerned about why you live? Just lead us to the Crystal Gems or vice-versa. I’ll see you safe.”

 

She says nothing in response.

 

“But first,” she turns to her, standing to attention as she stares her in the eye with those pits of hers. “Swear yourself back to me. Only then will you fall under my protection.”

 

And when Blue Diamond returns to her throne she has no choice but to bend the knee. To do anything else would have been suicide. She intones the rites of fealty, to swear to protect her Preceptor, her lord and master from all harm and to ensure that the Spire of Ice is first and foremost in her mind. At the height of the ritual, Blue Diamond takes out an ice-encrusted tub of inert cobalt from behind her throne and opens the lid to reveal a fine dust that shimmers with every colour under the rainbow; powdered gems. The Preceptor dips her fingers into the remnants of a thousand belligerents and brushes it gently onto her face. She draws a line down each eye, connecting the traces at the neck, and another line across the lips. It fizzes on her skin. It shimmers in the sunset light as the ritual is completed and when she licks her lips and swallows the substance she can taste salt. Something begins to whine at the edge of her hearing.

 

Afterwards she's led to a frozen room by her Preceptor’s feldspars who wear masks, cloths of every shade of blue wrapped about them so tightly it obscures their faces. They talk at her as they attach chains and garters and necklaces and rings all hewed from various types of ice onto her manifested form, cleaning up her dress and hair with deft, multi-jointed fingers that wiggle like tapeworms. They bind her face with enough fabric to completely obscure her features, yet she can see clearly. She looks beautiful. She feels like a doll.

 

She’s shoved out roughly of the dressing room, an azurite grasping her arm with a grip as solid as steel. She’s dragged to a waiting shuttle, and Blue Diamond’s on board waiting for her.

 

“Get on board. We’re heading to the Spire of Light.”

 

They take off, the Spire of Ice disappearing in the distance, and she wishes that she stayed in the mirror. At least in that prison, she was left in relative peace. Here, she feels like she’s been used; that she’s only a pawn. She feels used; she feels sick and hungry.

 

And, quietly, surrounded by those she hates most, Lapis Lazuli decides to do anything she can to bring DiamAuth crashing down alongside her, by any means necessary. Even if it means sacrificing her life.

 

They won’t get their hands on Steven, or any other human. She’ll see to that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Hyper-grav: A world where the gravity is exceptionally heavy. Perhaps the world is exceedingly large. Perhaps there is a black hole nearby. Perhaps it is through alien artifice.
> 
> Robonoid-statue: The latest craze in the White Lattice and their supporters is to have robonoids built into the forms of gems. They do a variety of tasks; from service to combat to aesthetic decoration.
> 
> Joy-pict: Entertainment for the lower-clades. To sit in front of a screen for a few days and watch a work of art or fiction on a holo-projector. How droll!
> 
> Org-parks: Maintained for the sanity of the precious few organics that live on Silica, they are considered small, miserable, filthy places by all good gems. The smallest of them are the size of Central Park, and just as well maintained.
> 
> Gravitonic dischargers: High yield graviton weapons that create extremely small singularities within a localised area. Exceptionally devastating.
> 
> Grav-chutes: Back-mounted devices that severely limit the effects of gravity on oneself. While lessons are required, eventually one will be able to fly like an avian with one of these devices. Designs are varied and numerous; orgs are limited to smoke-belching, second-rate versions, while the hematites get the most sophisticated versions with in-built holo-projectors.
> 
> Grav-halberds: Halberds capable of reversing gravity on impact, signature weapons of the hematites of the White Lattice.
> 
> Office of Dissipation: Whenever a gem is cracked hard enough to permanently kill/corrupt it, its death is recorded by the Office of Dissipation. Though it is staffed by a wide variety of different clades and sub-clades, all members of this board are without exception dull, depressed and consumed by nightmares.


End file.
